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.

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

"Clive Coleman" wrote in message
...
In message .com,
writes
visible networks with SSID visible
What is SSID?

Service Set Identifier - effectively the name of the network, to distinguish
it from other networks that might be within network range of a PC that wants
to connect to the network.

By not broadcasting the SSID, any PC that wants to connect to a network must
be configured with the network's SSID - and if it can't supply that SSID, it
doesn't connect.

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
...
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! :)

IT contractors at they're usual competent selves!

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.

As it's not a safety critical bit of kit, not really.

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 23:15:34 +0100, "Martin Underwood"
wrote:

- don't broadcast SSID

A waste of time.

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

Not only a waste of time but superfluous.

MAC filtering is implicit in the way CCMP utilises both client and server
MACs for key exchange.

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

WEP is a waste of time. 104 bit has been publicly broken in 3 minutes using
the latest tools.


WPA with at least a 30 character PSK at the very minimum.


greg

--
Delenda est Carthago

OT South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

Martin Underwood wrote:
"Clive Coleman" wrote in message
...
In message .com,

writes
visible networks with SSID visible
What is SSID?

Service Set Identifier - effectively the name of the network, to
distinguish
it from other networks that might be within network range of a PC
that wants
to connect to the network.

By not broadcasting the SSID, any PC that wants to connect to a
network must
be configured with the network's SSID - and if it can't supply that
SSID, it
doesn't connect.

The SSID is a name which is used in software to help users decide which
network to connect to. If you set your laptop up to always connect to
'myCompany' then it will connect to any channel with an access point
called 'myCompany'.

That is the only use of the SSID, simply hiding it doesn't do much
because a client could still try to connect to 'channel 5' and doesn't
need to know the SSID in order to do this.

Anyways - sorry for the thread - it went very OT and has not infact
answered my query about the use of wireless networks on the tube

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 15:55:02 +0100, Martin Underwood wrote:

"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)?

It's covered in something I was reading earlier
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=43 "The six dumbest ways to secure a
wireless LAN "

Steve

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

Surely one cracks into networks, and a programmer hacks away at code?

Nick

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

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

Nick Evans wrote:
Surely one cracks into networks, and a programmer hacks away at code?

Nick

That was the original definition but the press (for some reason)
started using the term hacker instead of cracker and then 5 years ago
the newspaper definition became what was used in GCSE exams. So: No,
not anymore

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

South Kensington Wireless LAN
 

On 15 Apr 2005 wrote:

Nick Evans wrote:

Surely one cracks into networks, and a programmer hacks away at code?

That was the original definition but the press (for some reason) started
using the term hacker instead of cracker and then 5 years ago the
newspaper definition became what was used in GCSE exams. So: No, not
anymore

Ahem. Some hackers still hack on code. It's just that there are now two
kinds of hackers, with the crhacker being the only type the unwashed
masses are aware of. Ironically, i don't think that sort refer to
themselves as hackers; they probably use some term with more digits in it.

And come on, the argument from authority is a bad enough fallacy to begin
with, but GCSE syllabuses? Or was it an attempt to not quite commit a
fallacy by using a not very authoritative authority? :)

tom

--
Vive la chimie, en particulier, et la connaissance en general. -- Herve This