Speaking of wireless

[Hewitt Tech]

The other good reason for waiting for 802.11g is that the 802.11b standard
has a very weak WEP implementation and I believe the g standard will correct
that. What I know about the 802.11b standard is that there are two WEP
encryption levels, 64 and 128 bit (actually less because there is a 24 bit
table of seed values). Although you will hear people say that using WEP is
useless, the truth is that not using WEP means you're running a wide open
network. Anyone with a Pringles can antenna and a wireless card can
participate in your wireless setup from as far as a couple of miles away.
The Orinoco PCMCIA cards have antenna connectors built into them. The 64 bit
WEP supposedly requires about 15 minutes worth of packet traffic for a
cracker to exploit while the 128 bit flavor takes 15 hours of traffic. There
are already proprietary solutions. I believe Cisco is using a dynamic keying
mechanism to change keys every 5 minutes or so. That means that cracking
their setup would be very difficult. The problem is that it's a proprietary
solution and only works when you are using their hardware exclusively.

Of course if someone is really determined to crack your systems they can
probably manage it but I don't think it's wise to leave the door completely
open.

-Alex

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Hall" <maddog at li.org>
To: "Kenneth E. Lussier" <ken.lussier at zuken.com>
Cc: <discuss at gnhlug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 10:24 AM
Subject: Re: Speaking of wireless


>
> ken.lussier at zuken.com said:
> > I was just looking at some SMC gear. They have a new 802.11b WAP/
> > Firewall called the "Barricade Turbo" that does 22MBit/sec (if you
> > have cards that will do it), and it has 256-bit WEP encryption.
>
> I saw this and it looked hot.  On the other hand I have the "Barricade",
and
> I am saving my pennies for the 802.11g product, which I am sure they will
> upgrade whatever is in the "Barricade Turbo" to have the same features,
but
> just be faster and compatible.
>
> SMC updates their micro-code, and I have downloaded it and updated it no
> problem.
>
> md
> --
>
============================================================================
=
> Jon "maddog" Hall
> Executive Director           Linux International(SM)
> email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St.
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>
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