• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Question about wireless networking...

S

Scootin159

Diamond Member
How does a (I think it's called) Wireless access point know what NIC's belong to it? Like say I had a wireless network in my house...what would keep me from hacking into my friends wireless network next door?
 
Most ask for the name of the network... so you type the name of the network and that tells you NIC which network to use. As far as using your neighbors, if there's no security, then there's nothing to prevent you from doing this - if fact there's been a grassroots effort to create a wireless network in some cities (San Francisco, New York) using open access wireless bridges. You can run a scan and see the wireless networks within range. But if your neighbor wanted to stop you from using his network, he'd probably enable encryption and/or filter by MAC address (ie. limit the users to certain MAC addresses). You could then try to hack his encryption and you might be able to snoop on him, but the MAC address limiting should stop you from using his network.
 
I think pm is right. There's a scope ID that the network uses to tie together the different wireless NICs. If you need something to be secure, you have to use WEP encryption, which has recently been shown not to be all that secure anyway.

You can also specifically allow only certain mac addresses on your network (depending on the drivers), which is a realistic option only for small private networks.

Overall the wireless networks have made great strides. I recently installed one at a lawfirm of a friend of mine. It works very well.
 
Well I am just thinking of 2 particular situations:

Somone in their house wanting to restrict it to just their computers....this could probably be done easily with MAC addresses

-but-

What is a college campus to do to keep people from neighboring houses accessing the network? I know my college campus has it setup to where anyone connected to the network get's their internet access....sounds like to me if you live near a college campus you could hack off this. If you just have to enter a name into your card...this could be obtained easily from someone on campus.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top