Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

 

Wi-Fi Jamming Mischief

'Indefensible' Wi-Fi flaw discovered in 802.11b network protocol - Computerworld.  This Bob Brewin 2004-05-17 ComputerWorld article reports on the Denial of Service jamming attack that 802.11b is vulnerable to.  This vulnerability is accomplished at the medium (the modulation scheme of 802.11b) and cannot be mitigated with current hardware. (802.11a and uses of 802.11g in non-802.11b mode are apparently free of the defect.)

US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU #106678 provides specific details and contrasts this vulnerability with other known vulnerabilities for IEEE 802.11.

I am warming up for a security engineering course next month.  This information reveals how there are multiple levels of vulnerability and trust points in network protocols.  It is useful to wonder what form of risk management would lead to confinement and mitigation of these eventualities.  It is also useful to recognize that our development of technology is error-prone from a safety and security perspective, and appreciate what it takes to create dependable results in the face of that.
posted by Dennis at 5/24/2004 05:24:20 PM