Thursday, August 03, 2006

Wi-Fi Beware....

Security researchers David Maynor and Jon Ellch showed attendees at the Black Hat USA conference, a video in which they took about 60 seconds to compromise a MacBook.

How? Just by targeting its wireless card and wireless device driver. What's more, It's not limited to Macs. By exploiting bugs in four different wireless cards, the researchers found ways to seize control of laptops running Windows and Linux as well.

It's not limited to laptops either, desktops are not spared. The root of the problem lies in the wireless standard 802.11 more commonly known as Wireless B and Wireless G. The standard itself is large and complexed and complexity is a hacker's best friend. Furthermore, as vendors rush to implement the new complex wireless standards, security is often compromised for speed. Thus, wireless device drivers are often "buggy" and poorly written.

In the Black Hat demostration, Maynor was able to create, read and delete files on the Apple laptop. The MacBook, which was running a fully patched version of the latest Apple operating system OS X, showed no indication that it had been compromised. OS X is regarded as one of the more secured operating system, so I think it's fairly alarming to the millions of Windows users.

I think it might turned out to be a nightmare locally. In any HDB block, you can easily detect dozens of wireless networks. Maybe, we can reconsider the good, old ethernet cable.


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posted by wert | Thursday, August 03, 2006 | Email This!


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Disclaimer: This blog is not intended to be authorative or clever in any way. It was based on rambling of a half crazed creature, so treat it as such and let it be! I was asked to keep my dangerous thoughts and unbalanced views all in one safe place , and so I did. Objectivity, Accuracy, Responsiblity and any High Standards are certainly not part of this blog's features. However, I must stress that I do not strive to mislead people, confuse people, and much less undermine our national strategy.