Email Delivery

Receive new posts as email.

Email address

Syndicate this site

RSS | Atom

Contact

About This Site
Contact Us
Privacy Policy

Search


November 2010
Sun Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30        

Stories by Category

Basics :: Basics
Casting :: Casting Listen In Podcasts Videocasts
Culture :: Culture Hacking
Deals :: Deals
FAQ :: FAQ
Future :: Future
Hardware :: Hardware Adapters Appliances Chips Consumer Electronics Gaming Home Entertainment Music Photography Video Gadgets Mesh Monitoring and Testing PDAs Phones Smartphones
Industry :: Industry Conferences Financial Free Health Legal Research Vendor analysis
International :: International
Media :: Media Locally cached Streaming
Metro-Scale Networks :: Metro-Scale Networks Community Networking Municipal
Network Types :: Network Types Broadband Wireless Cellular 2.5G and 3G 4G Power Line Satellite
News :: News Mainstream Media
Politics :: Politics Regulation Sock Puppets
Schedules :: Schedules
Security :: Security 802.1X
Site Specific :: Site Specific Administrative Detail April Fool's Blogging Book review Cluelessness Guest Commentary History Humor Self-Promotion Unique Wee-Fi Who's Hot Today?
Software :: Software Open Source
Spectrum :: Spectrum 60 GHz
Standards :: Standards 802.11a 802.11ac 802.11ad 802.11e 802.11g 802.11n 802.20 Bluetooth MIMO UWB WiGig WiMAX ZigBee
Transportation and Lodging :: Transportation and Lodging Air Travel Aquatic Commuting Hotels Rails
Unclassified :: Unclassified
Vertical Markets :: Vertical Markets Academia Enterprise WLAN Switches Home Hot Spot Aggregators Hot Spot Advertising Road Warrior Roaming Libraries Location Medical Public Safety Residential Rural SOHO Small-Medium Sized Business Universities Utilities wISP
Voice :: Voice

Archives

November 2010 | October 2010 | September 2010 | August 2010 | July 2010 | June 2010 | May 2010 | April 2010 | March 2010 | February 2010 | January 2010 | December 2009 | November 2009 | October 2009 | September 2009 | August 2009 | July 2009 | June 2009 | May 2009 | April 2009 | March 2009 | February 2009 | January 2009 | December 2008 | November 2008 | October 2008 | September 2008 | August 2008 | July 2008 | June 2008 | May 2008 | April 2008 | March 2008 | February 2008 | January 2008 | December 2007 | November 2007 | October 2007 | September 2007 | August 2007 | July 2007 | June 2007 | May 2007 | April 2007 | March 2007 | February 2007 | January 2007 | December 2006 | November 2006 | October 2006 | September 2006 | August 2006 | July 2006 | June 2006 | May 2006 | April 2006 | March 2006 | February 2006 | January 2006 | December 2005 | November 2005 | October 2005 | September 2005 | August 2005 | July 2005 | June 2005 | May 2005 | April 2005 | March 2005 | February 2005 | January 2005 | December 2004 | November 2004 | October 2004 | September 2004 | August 2004 | July 2004 | June 2004 | May 2004 | April 2004 | March 2004 | February 2004 | January 2004 | December 2003 | November 2003 | October 2003 | September 2003 | August 2003 | July 2003 | June 2003 | May 2003 | April 2003 | March 2003 | February 2003 | January 2003 | December 2002 | November 2002 | October 2002 | September 2002 | August 2002 | July 2002 | June 2002 | May 2002 | April 2002 | March 2002 | February 2002 | January 2002 | December 2001 | November 2001 | October 2001 | September 2001 | August 2001 | July 2001 | June 2001 | May 2001 | April 2001 |

Recent Entries

In-Flight Wi-Fi and In-Flight Bombs
Can WPA Protect against Firesheep on Same Network?
Southwest Sets In-Flight Wi-Fi at $5
Eye-Fi Adds a View for Web Access
Firesheep Makes Sidejacking Easy
Wi-Fi Direct Certification Starts
Decaf on the Starbucks Digital Network
Google Did Snag Passwords
WiMax and LTE Not Technically 4G by ITU Standards
AT&T Wi-Fi Connections Keep High Growth with Free Service

Site Philosophy

This site operates as an independent editorial operation. Advertising, sponsorships, and other non-editorial materials represent the opinions and messages of their respective origins, and not of the site operator. Part of the FM Tech advertising network.

Copyright

Entire site and all contents except otherwise noted © Copyright 2001-2010 by Glenn Fleishman. Some images ©2006 Jupiterimages Corporation. All rights reserved. Please contact us for reprint rights. Linking is, of course, free and encouraged.

Powered by
Movable Type

« Greatest. Fax. Machine. EVER. | Main | It Lives »

August 3, 2006

My Guess on the Wi-Fi Exploit

The fuss caused yesterday by a video presented at Black Hat 2006 of a Wi-Fi hack is still ongoing: Some folks want to deny that the hack is possible because the researchers didn't show it live in controlled circumstances. Instead, they showed a video (available at Security Fix) that shows part of the process of owning a MacBook Pro. Unfortunately for those who want to deny the possibility of this, and despite Apple's lack of public statement on it, Intel just released driver updates a few days ago for its Centrino adapters that basically state precisely what these guys have said they uncovered as a flaw and reported to Intel, Apple, and others.

The flaw affects Windows XP and Mac OS X, although it's probably only a MacIntel problem. (I have to believe that with seven years of AirPort and three of AirPort Extreme, that this category of flaw would have been uncovered on the PowerPC side, if anyone cared.)

So my guess? It has to do with a malformed beaconing frame. Access points that are not set to closed status in which the SSID (service set identifier or the name of the network) isn't broadcast are constantly sending out frames that explain who they are. Whether connected to a network or not, Wi-Fi adapters are receiving and processing this information; it's why you see a list of Available Networks in Windows XP or have a dropdown list from the AirPort menu in Mac OS X.

A specially crafted beaconing frame is the only method I can conceive of in which a computer that is otherwise not engaged in specific behavior, such as connected to a network or connecting to one, could be attacked, and that's what the researchers claim can happen. Other thoughts?

Update: Jim Thompson details extensively what he thinks is at work, including the kinds of frames that unassociated and unauthenticated Wi-Fi cards will accept.

4 Comments

It's a whole lot of hype for nothing new. They are getting the victim laptop to associate to the attacker laptop, which is acting as an AP.

The malformed Beacon idea is impossible because they still have to send data between the two laptops once the victim is hijacked. Beacon frames are received by unassociated stations and the information in those Beacons are processed, but none of that information is sent above the MAC layer. Therefore, creating a new file at the application layer would be impossible.

I will give them some credit because they seem to have found something that allows the to circumvent the normal login procedure on the victim laptop. You never know, though. It's always possible that they rigged the victim laptop beforehand

The video clearly shows a black MacBook and not a MacBook Pro. The MacBook does not have an express card slot. The video seems to show an Express 34 card though I guess it could have been a huge USB WiFi adapter. Do you know if USB WiFi adapters work on OS X out of the box? Would they be seen as WiFi or ethernet? All very odd and not too convincing.

There are quite a few USB cards that work on Mac OS X. 802.11g and 802.11a/g adapters from ZyXel (unsure of the chipset) and 802.11b adapters from Linksys, Netgear and D-Link (Prism II chipset) all work on Mac OS X machines.

I believe I was wrong in what I wrote earlier about Beacon frames not being part of the attack. They certainly could be. I still am very skeptical that the attack could be carried out to the degree they carried it out (creating, modifying and deleting files at will) without an association. I just don't see why they would have used an associated station for the attack if they didn't need to.

Ok, so I was at Defcon and these guys showed the video there and did a Q & A.

No one brought up the beaconing question; although that's what I first thought of too, along with a lot of people in the room. We questioned what kind of Wireless Adapter was in the computer at question - and it was a USB Wi-Fi card so that takes care of that.

The reason they didn't do a live demo at Defcon or at Black Hat was well, according to them "because everyone in the room had sniffers running and would have captured the malformed code"

I've been thinking about this a lot - especially on the flight back home, and it must have been a beacon request....Whatever the case may be, the 100 Mb patch a few days before defcon make me think this is ligit