July 24, 2002
Be vewy vewy qwuiet. We're sewrching fowr wirewess networks...
Progress continues on the house. They poured the concrete slab yesterday. The lumber for the frame of our house still hasn't arrived. It looks like we're waiting for that and when it arrives, I imagine they'll begin constructing the first floor flooring and then the roof. The rest of my networking supplies have arrived, so I'm ready to roll as soon as the electricians finish their work. On a similar note, I've registered for yet another .Mac account (no, I'm not paying for it..it's a free 60-day trial account) where I'm posting a photo gallery from the photos that we take up at our new house. Check it now, and check it often. I'll probably be adding photos to it almost every day for the next month and a half.
Olivia and I had a fun experience tonight after getting some grub at Mexico Restaurant: We went sniffing around pricey west-end neighborhoods for 802.11 wireless networks. How did we do this? I used my PowerBook (with AirPort card installed) and a free piece of software called "MacStumbler". MacStumbler is the Mac version of a free piece of PC software called NetStumbler. While you have the program open, it constantly scans for wireless networks and notifies you when it finds one. It gives you a ton of information about each LAN too, like which company makes the access point, signal strength, and if encryption (WEP) is turned on or not. Very cool program. So, basically, it just sits there and sniffs until you tell it not to. So, what did we find? How about this: We found 32 wireless networks in about 5 or 6 different neighborhoods. Of those 32 networks, only 7 of them had WEP encryption enabled. The rest? Wide open. Wide open enough that we literally sat out in front of their house and surfed the Internet using their connection. It was pretty cool. Click the graphic on the right to see a screenshot of some of the networks that we found. If you find that you have some extra time on your hands this week, I HIGHLY recommend that you grab your laptop and go sniff some wireless LANs. By the way, we performed this same test downtown at work the other day and found some 17 wireless networks in downtown Richmond..only 3 or 4 of them had WEP enabled. Amazing.
That sounds like a pretty cool little experiment you all performed. Its hard to believe that few people had WEP enabled.
Posted by: Top at July 24, 2002 10:47 AMI know in a lot of cases, it's easier to just remove encryption since some machines and configurations have different standards.
Let me write that again...
DIFFERENT STANDARDS.
Ugh, it makes my blood boil that you, me, and Mike all have wireless networks and yet none of us can connect to each other's networks without removing (or compromising) our encryption. It's ridiculous that no one seems to follow the 802.11B STANDARD.
Anyhoo- I'd love to try netstumbler, but they state very clearly in the documentation that the Linksys card will not work with the software. :(
(I guess I could always buy a cheap one somewhere and then use that... Hmmmm...)
Posted by: Brian Korte at July 24, 2002 11:07 AMOh- didn't get to finish my thought there-- it may be easier to remove encryption for inter-machine compatibility, but most people probably do not use encryption because:
A) They don't know how
B) They don't care
C) They're lazy
But I would submit that it's option D -
D) The config. isn't set with encryption right out of the box.
And that would explain it. No one reads directions until they come across a problem. Yet, using encryption right out of the box would almost guarantee a secure network. Working where I do, I hear tons of stories about companies who thought they were protected by outside attackers because they bought a firewall. Yet the firewalls weren't set up with any firewall rules, so basically they were expensive paperweights that let bad traffic in and out all day long. It's only the default-deny firewalls that are secure- the ones that right out of the box block EVERYTHING and then you go in and tell them what they're allowed to pass through.
I'm ranting here, but there's also option E:
E) They don't have encryption on because they believe in the concept of a free Internet.
(which, aside from the terrorist and pedophile activity, I think is a really good thing)
Posted by: Brian Korte at July 24, 2002 12:00 PMYou're right Jeff. I think this comic strip was written for you.
Posted by: Big B at July 24, 2002 03:30 PM