Thinking of wireless? Better read this.

I happened across this site the other day.
www.netstumbler.com
Fortunatly it sounds like most of these people are just into it for fun, but I am sure there are some out there that are malicious. I plan on doing wireless myself, but with ALOT of safegaurds.

Spy

netstumbler has been around for at least 8 months.

If you 802.11b in a congested area, turn of WAP, run a router with MAC address control, run software firewalls on each computer and realize anything that goes over the network is vulnerable to interception. Such is the way of public airwaves. Been running my 802.11b system for over a year now and never had an overt intrusion attempt, but someone could be listening....

correct me if i am wrong,
wireless is ONE way. Which as a download speed around 300kbits, and 0 upload. And users need a 56k for uploading.

It's not a good thing. Mostly only those who live in the area where has no cable or dsl use wireless.

#18 said:

correct me if i am wrong,
wireless is ONE way. Which as a download speed around 300kbits, and 0 upload. And users need a 56k for uploading.

It's not a good thing. Mostly only those who live in the area where has no cable or dsl use wireless.

Click to expand...

I think they are refering to home wireless LAN's. That being the case, you are partly correct about the transmission state of wireless technology. All 802.11b,g wireless Access points and adapter cards currently run half-duplex. Meaning send and receive transfers cannot take place simultaneously.

If you go wireless you better make sure that you secure it. VPN's are a good option if you can set one up. We recently had ISS (Internet Security Systems) come and do a security seminar at my office. What they said was truely scary, and convinced me to wait a while before I go wireless. They sent a couple of their 'penetration testers' out in a rental car driving around Atlanta. They didn't have to drive very far to find some vulnerabilities. Within 1 city block they were able to get on 192 different wireless networks!