wireless network security

I'm payed a lot of money to keep a large network system secure. As a result I've learned and established proven network security techniques that are used throughout the network security industry. Wireless networking is the hottest craze to have swept through the networking world, if you haven't been paying attention. The biggest downfall of a wireless network, though, is the fact that anyone who receives the signal can potentially view the network traffic. Thus arrives our bestest friend: signal encryption!

Signal encryption comes in several flavors which range from disgusting, to nominally edible. WEP is by far the most disgusting example. If it were a food it would be in the Oscar Meyer freeze dried and vacuum packed food section of the supermarket. The flaws are apparent and easily exploitable by anyone marginally interested. Here is what wikipedia offers us, "If enough traffic can be intercepted, then it can be broken by brute force in a matter of an hour or two. If that weren’t bad enough, the time it takes to crack WEP only grows linearly with key length, so a 104-bit key doesn’t provide any significant protection over a 40-bit key when faced against a determined hacker." Makes you think twice about eating headcheese.

Our second choice is WPA encryption. It provides much better authentication that WEP putting it in the range of a good deli sandwich. Encryptions offered are TKIP(deli sandwich with non-head cheese), and AES-CCMP(deli sandwich wish avocado and all the extra junk). AES-CCMP is the standard for 802.11i and WPA2. The problem with WPA becomes your implementation. WPA Enterprise offers RADIUS authentication providing each connection with personal authentication. WPA Personal, on the other hand, relies on a passphrase to gain access. Problem being that there is only one passphrase coming in length from 8 to 63 characters. This could be subject to a brute force, or dictionary attack. A 63 character passphrase would offer far superior protection against an 8 character phrase, and at least 20 should be used. Wikipedia offers this, "Weak PSK passphrases can be broken using off-line dictionary attacks by capturing the messages in the four-way exchange when the client reconnects after being deauthenticated. Wireless suites such as aircrack-ng can crack a weak passphrase in less than a minute. WPA Personal is secure when used with ‘good’ passphrases or a full 64-character hexadecimal key." Thus, use strong passphrases in association with your WPA encryption, or you'll suffer from nothing less than a head cheese flavor in your master crafted deli sandwich. WPA2 encryption is the next standard in the line of upgrades to encryption and will be seen more widespread in the coming years. Compared with WEP and WAP it uses only the finest artisan craft breads and organic ingredients from local farmers.

I have overcome all of the deficiencies of encryption by employing a direct, psychological fear-based defense method. When a wardriver is attempting to scour wireless networks that may be harboring curried chutney or a really great pesto, you have to focus your defenses on a different level. What would be a potential downfall of connecting to an unknown wireless network not controlled by yourself? You guessed it(or not) a virus!!
The most effective form of wireless security has to be to change your SSID to something unsavory for anyone looking to get onto it. Start security right at the gates of your fortress. Who in there right mind would attempt to join a network called 'Virus', or 'Trojan Horse'? Better yet, shoot straight for their physical self. Name your network 'AIDS' or 'West Nile Virus'. That ought to deter just about anyone except the CDC, and then you might have a court battle with the feds if one of them really does catch something.
As proof of concept for my contribution to the field of wireless security, the college where I work has several student teams in the field of Construction Management who are attending a friendly cage-match competition against other colleges. At the several day slaughter fest of project scheduling and brutal array of speeches, the teams will need personal wireless networks to coordinate and spearhead attacks against their foes. My idea has been picked up as the leading security model of one of these teams and they will bring glory to our college with a vast arsenal of wireless security techniques.

in defense of wally herger

I retract my statement. Wally Herger is a fucking tool.

Original post:
"Although I don't want to defend such a dismal example of a politician, he is doing what he said he would do. What did he say he would do? He quite clearly said he would follow the vote of the Republican party, and he has done that overwhelmingly well.
He's a puppet, and a moron, but he's not a liar. He's just doesn't have any opinion; except that of the Republican party."

joys of network ghosting

At my work I use norton ghost 7.5. laugh it up; I know it's archaic. It may be archaic, but ghost is one of the most useful pieces of software I have in my daily battle with the computer illiterate masses. It allows me to take the complete image of a particular computer I set up and broadcast it to all of the machines in a computer lab with minimal setup.
My problem with it now, though, is with finding the proper LAN drivers to get the software to recognize. I have to ghost 20 machines, 10 are with a really old asus motherboard with an nForce2 chipset. Piles of crap, essentially. I wouldn't choose to do this type of work with such obsolete piles of garbage, but my services were volunteered by my boss as these machines are being donated to a school in oakland which can't otherwise afford computers. so we're giving them crap, to rub it in their face I suppose. This is what happens when religion does charity; they give malnourished children(whose families are killed by war and famine) a jesus t-shirt and a stack of bibles.
Back to the problem at hand. after searching for a day(a full 8-hour work period) for a driver network DOS driver called nvndis.dos, I almost gave up. Now I've found it, which is a small victory for me. The battle rages on though, as now I'm having a problem with the ghost program bootup in DOS actually seeing the driver and being able to bind it.
Like I said, I never volunteered to do this project, and I knew from the beginning that it was going to be somewhat painful. Luckily I have until the 8th to finish, and if I don't finish, I'm not taking responsibility.