Peddling Snake Oil as Security

Peddling Snake Oil as Security
Richard Forno, 2002-04-17

Wireless security vendors are trying to create a market where none exists. As always, the key to better wireless security is better practice, not new products.

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-17
Nicholas Weaver (1 replies)

"Consider the Ethernet version of Cisco?s VLAN Membership Policy Server (VMPS), which maps hardware MAC addresses to physical and logical access control lists. If your laptop or desktop isn?t registered in VMPS, or you don?t have the correct credentials or permissions, you can?t access the network. ...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-19
Anonymous

Based on personal experience (both from the view point of the attacker and the defender), I agree much more with Mark and Nicholas than the author of this article....

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-17
M@SomeBigTelecom

I certainly agree with this. Working at a company where the very same words, repeated verbatim, from my IT department about the evils of 802.11b has forced a complete shutdown of the technology. Among the less easily controlled, this resulted in a proliferation of 802.11b APs. Subsequently my req...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-18
Mark Levine (1 replies)

Without an access point authentication method like LEAP, 802.11 is just not useable in a business environment. Even if you treat your wireless network like the internet and require users to VPN into the core network (a great idea), people can use you wireless network like their private internet. I h...

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VLANs and Internet routing 2002-04-19
Anonymous (2 replies)

> Even if you treat your wireless network like the internet
> and require users to VPN into the core network (a great
> idea), people can use you wireless network like their
> private internet.

Wouldn't the obvious solution be to not route non-VLAN traffic to the Internet? In fact, the IPs '...

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VLANs and Internet routing 2002-04-19
Mark Levine

It's a layer 2 issue not 3. I never said they would have access to the internet through the companies ISP. Simply that outside parties can use your wireless lan as a transport.

An example: corp.com has a large campus that they want to provide wireless access for their laptop users. So they setup...

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VLANs and Internet routing 2002-04-19
Nicholas Weaver

It sounds like what is being described is using the various access points (in their VLAN) as a network for communicating between individuals, not individuals and outside the net.

Thus you can't even just set up a VLAN, what is needed is individual routing of each 802.11 link to the firewall mac...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-19
net@ether (2 replies)

http://www.80211-planet.com/columns/article/0,4000,1781_1000
821,00.html

Set your AP to accept only this type of traffic and you're all set. We've tested it and it works great....

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-19
Anonymous (1 replies)

Isn't running a 802.11b network like saying to the enemy: "Here i am! Just tune your HARM missiles to 2.4Ghz."...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-23
Anonymous

Amen. Even if they don't have the missles, they could crank up a jammer to blow away every wireless card within 20 miles--with a good line of site, anyway. Until it can work with freq hopping (or at least contention mode-like bursts) I don't see how they can expect to pull this one off. Maybe I'm...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-22
Anonymous

That link:
http://www.80211-planet.com/columns/article/0,4000,1781_1000
821,00.html
specifies an article that could vbe considered an add-on (hardware).
Isn't this article saying you don't need this, or am I missing something?...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-19
Glenn Larsson (ichinin@suespammers.org)

I have some questions to those seeking to implement Kerberos onto their hardware:

*What* was the actual problem; Was it ever authentication or the key agreement protocol that were broken?

How exactly will Kerberos prevent me from walking around with my iPaq and sniffing for RLans, when there i...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-19
Me

Richard,

Your live in a dream world...Perhaps you should take a sabattical from writing and speaking and go work for a 15,000+ employee company. Your "technical" suggestions are great if you're building a company from the ground up. However, in "ther real world" you can't just go and rebuild a ...

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Wireless Security, Specifically 2002-04-19
Mike Outmesguine

The whole point of this article is meant to say that industry does not need a new set of products or services specific to wireless networks. I disagree.

The complexity of securing a wireless network with non-specific vendor solutions is intense and ususally DOES need a complete review of the exi...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-21
Hetalkumar Joshi

Your Comments are perfactly valid. Professional doesn't need explanations for security-issues for wireless. It's mostly same for wireless and wired networks. Just need some more optimization and planning....

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-22
Anonymous

I believe the overall message of this article is incorrect. Wireless Network technologies do present a new challenge for security professionals. While I do believe that some of the new wireless security products are somewhat useless, that does not mean that securing a wired network is exactly like...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-22
Anonymous

As a user of wireless netorks in a maximum security enviornment, these words ring very true. If its good enough for the wire..its good enough for me ad my wireless. Not that wired networks ever get hacked ;·)...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-23
crazynetworkguy

Then what's going to drive the next economic boom! :) The only people that I see using wireless notebooks are tree huggers who keep their workspace so sloppy they _have_ to go outside. That and the "check this out guy". The only people that need wireless LANs are the military, and the occassional...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-04-28
Anonymous

That article is probably the most ridiculous set of malarky I've ever seen. It looks like the author spent too much time working for one of the Big 5. High on verbiage, low on useful info. Wireless technologies present the world with an entirely new set of difficulties. This is obvious if you've...

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security - Off Base 2002-05-03
Anonymous

While everyone should agree with the author about some security products that are closer to sugar pills than real products .. there are some key points missed.

If your perspective is the wireless network at a fast food location ... fine. But if you are talking about say a hospital your so wrong....

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Peddling Snake Oil as Security 2002-05-07
big ROB

Richard,

Have they bashed you enough? I don't think so. You must work for Homeland Security..all politics and no beef. Lets write a quick article that your grand-daddy boss likes, not one that makes since.

The poor economies of scale that a VPN offers in real world use would not allow for...

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