July 31, 2003
So secure you can't use it...
Well don't I feel like the fool. I got myself a brand new D-Link DWL-520+ WiFi card for a machine and damned if it didn't refuse to work with my Linksys BEFW11S4 gateway. I naturally assumed it was the card/driver on the PC at fault. So off I went, merrily chasing wild geese.
Fast-forward four agnonizingly frustrating hours later when it dawns on me... MAC filters might be enabled in the Linksys....
Dang! Sure enough, not only had I dilligently turned on the WEP functionality (yeah, yeah I know about WEP security, or lack thereof) but I'd also told it to refuse to speak to anything other than the MAC address on my NetGear MA401 PCMCIA card in the Toshiba laptop. That shiny new card wasn't on the list so it didn't connect.
The irritating thing is nothing burped up the right sort of error message. The Linksys didn't utter a peep about this rogue card showing up and trying to bust it's way into the network. But, worse yet, the card didn't say "dude, the access point just said 'go away' so we can't connect". That'd have be a hell of a lot more helpful...
So, once again, doing the job the right way and forgetting about it catches me out again! Of course the lesson here is documenting one's network is probably a good idea. But hey, as the old saying goes "the cobbler's children have no shoes" so why should a networking guy's own network be any different?
And we wonder why mere mortals trying to use this stuff don't bother trying to secure it...
A close wifi network is like an RSS 2.0 feed - both are useless to anyone but the owner.
Use an open network dude :) Don't bogart the 802.11!
Posted by: Kevin Burton on August 1, 2003 05:47 AMThe utter radio silence that the WAP gives to unrecognized MAC addresses is a good thing. If it said anything at all to cards that it wasn't supposed to talk to (even just an error message) it would be more open to exploits and denial of service attacks. Plus, if you have broadcasts off and MAC filtering enabled, your local war-driver doesn't see you unless you're home and operating.
