Survey: 88% of Mumbai's wireless networks easy to compromise

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SSID broadcasting

Broadcasting your SSID isn't necessarily a security issue in that all it does is hide it from Microsoft's default wifi network listing and configuration tool. Any other OS and almost all other wifi networking tools will still easily see wireless access points with SSID turned off.

In fact I've read several articles that indicate that turning SSID off actually makes your wireless network more visible to packet sniffing tools in that the client and the WAP have to send more data to each other, especially in areas where there may be multiple WAPs. The WAP and the client device always send header data in each packet that identifies each device uniquely anyway, regardless if the SSID header is blank or has a name.

Using the default SSID though can be a problem in that it implies (often correctly) that the entire WAP and the router that it is connected to are using default settings.

Personally I prefer playing with social engineering and give my network the SSID "Virus Infected Network".

Posted by: m_coombes@...   Posted on: 10/16/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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