South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

I was passing through South Ken today when my phone informed me it had
found a wireless network called "train_logging". Is this anything to
do with the station?

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

Yes, please don't try to hack into it.

wrote in message
oups.com...
I was passing through South Ken today when my phone informed me it had
found a wireless network called "train_logging". Is this anything to
do with the station?

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

Robin Mayes wrote:
Yes, please don't try to hack into it.

Er, it seems that the OP's post would indirectly encourage such
activities simply by existing, disregarding any actions on the OP's
part.

Hopefully it will be shut down ASAP.

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

"TheOneKEA" wrote in message
oups.com...
Robin Mayes wrote:
Yes, please don't try to hack into it.

Er, it seems that the OP's post would indirectly encourage such
activities simply by existing, disregarding any actions on the OP's
part.

Hopefully it will be shut down ASAP.

Presumably if the wireless LAN has been configured sensibly, it will reject
any "casual" attempts to connect to it:

- don't broadcast SSID

- only allow connections from PCs with specific MAC addresses (listed)

- WPA (or at the very least 128-bit WEP) security


At least if a passing PC is set to talk to any available wireless LAN, it
won't automatically connect to this network. NetStumbler and other similar
programs will show its existence (you can't really avoid that) but
passers-by won't know whose network it is, what range of IP addresses are in
use etc.


A quick drive by my local industrial estate today (with TCP disabled on my
laptop to avoid accidental connection!) showed a surprising number of
visible networks with SSID visible and a few with no encryption. I resisted
the temptation... ;-)

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Martin Underwood wrote:

"TheOneKEA" wrote in message
oups.com...
Robin Mayes wrote:

Yes, please don't try to hack into it.

British security at its finest! :)

Er, it seems that the OP's post would indirectly encourage such
activities simply by existing, disregarding any actions on the OP's
part.

Hopefully it will be shut down ASAP.

Presumably if the wireless LAN has been configured sensibly, it will reject
any "casual" attempts to connect to it:

- don't broadcast SSID
- only allow connections from PCs with specific MAC addresses (listed)

Figleaves.

- WPA security

Effective.

(or at the very least 128-bit WEP)

Admittedly fairly large figleaf.

A quick drive by my local industrial estate today (with TCP disabled on
my laptop to avoid accidental connection!) showed a surprising number of
visible networks with SSID visible and a few with no encryption. I
resisted the temptation... ;-)

There was a recent article - BBC News, i think - about the density of
unsecured wireless networks in central London; the specific examples were
ones in inns of court, a judge's office, and the MoD. TfL, though - that
could cause *real* disruption.

tom

--
mimeotraditionalists

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sun, 10 Apr 2005, Martin Underwood wrote:

"TheOneKEA" wrote in message
oups.com...

Presumably if the wireless LAN has been configured sensibly, it
will reject
any "casual" attempts to connect to it:

- don't broadcast SSID

It *was* broadcasting the SSID otherwise it wouldn't have popped up in
the short time I was passing through the station

- only allow connections from PCs with specific MAC addresses
(listed)

Figleaves.



- WPA security

Effective.


- Or a connection only to a VPN server so you have to log on to that to
get anywhere (more secure than WEP / WPA)


But anyway is there an interesting reason for its existence?


A quick drive by my local industrial estate today (with TCP
disabled on
my laptop to avoid accidental connection!) showed a surprising
number of
visible networks with SSID visible and a few with no encryption. I
resisted the temptation... ;-)

There was a recent article - BBC News, i think - about the density of
unsecured wireless networks in central London; the specific examples
were
ones in inns of court, a judge's office, and the MoD. TfL, though -
that
could cause *real* disruption.


It was an Evenining Standard report. They mentioned the number of
WLANs between Derry street and the Albert Hall which didn't have WEP
enabled but they didn't distinguish between insecure work/home networks
and public access (pub / coffee shop / phonebox) networks.

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

"Robin Mayes" wrote in message
...
Yes, please don't try to hack into it.


What does it do then? Don't say its as simple as "it logs trains"

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

In article ,
(Martin Underwood) wrote:

Presumably if the wireless LAN has been configured sensibly, it will
reject any "casual" attempts to connect to it:

- don't broadcast SSID

Security by obscurity, pretty useless.

- only allow connections from PCs with specific MAC addresses (listed)

- WPA (or at the very least 128-bit WEP) security

That's more like it.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

"Colin Rosenstiel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Martin Underwood) wrote:

Presumably if the wireless LAN has been configured sensibly, it will
reject any "casual" attempts to connect to it:

- don't broadcast SSID

Security by obscurity, pretty useless.

Is the SSID readable by more subtle means, or is the only way to connect if
the SSID is not broadcast to try likely names in turn (brute force)?


- only allow connections from PCs with specific MAC addresses (listed)

- WPA (or at the very least 128-bit WEP) security

That's more like it.

Yes, remove temptation by hiding the SSID and setting MAC filtering; for the
determined hackers who penetrate this, rely on WPA. It's a shame that
(AFAIK) a wireless adaptor can't run WEP and WPA at the same time: WPA for
clients that support it and WEP (better than no encryption at all) for those
clients that don't support WEP. Is it still the case that WPA is only
supported on XP and not on Win9x or W2K, or is that restriction no longer
true?

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

In message .com,
writes
visible networks with SSID visible
What is SSID?
--
Clive.