Re: Orinocco Silver and wep encryption.
"Mark" == Mark Roach <mrroach@okmaybe.com> writes:
Mark> Not to get too offtopic here, but my view on this is that
Well, Martin seems to have solved his problem so I guess we can just
beat this one to death while we're enjoying it ;-)
Mark> it's better to treat a wep encrypted link as if there were
Mark> no encryption on it, so to keep myself from being lazy and
Mark> trusting wep, I have just turned it off. Most protocols are
Mark> capable of using encryption these days and otherwise you can
Mark> set up a vpn (or ssh port forwarding) quite easily.
Mark> I guess I would rather have a proper sense of insecurity
Mark> than a false sense of security. Anyone with me on that or am
Mark> I just goofy?
Probably you've got people on both sides. I guess the issue is how
much security you need, and how well firewalled you are on your wired
system. In my case, WEP keeps me happy enough. I rarely use the
wireless link, and traffic on it is usually very light (and will be
but briefly after testing gets the new glibc, rumoured to be in the
next few hours!:-). Given my physical location, my neighbors, and the
light traffic, I'm not too worried about war drivers breaking into my
network and picking my key.
If they did, they'd find a Woody stable system and a Mac OS X
system. Both patched/updated frequently. If my wireless devices were
running (usually not, I'm not a big laptop user at home), they'd find
another Woody system, and perhaps a Sarge system. They would find no
GNOME or KDE apps, no telnet, no ftp, no NFS mounts or exports. Sure
they could break into it. They can go ahead, it's a risk I'll take,
because my system is probably more secure than most to start
with. Hardly close to really secure, but it is enough for what I do
with my machines, the data on them etc.
Finally, I do watch the ARP cache on my wireless router every once in
a while. AFAIK I have yet to see a MAC that I don't know, so I don't
believe I have been cracked (yet). If there is someone free loading on
my DSL I don't really mind though. If they'd ask me, I'd probably let
them anyway. If there was a "freenet" deal in my area, I'd probably
join. So that is not an issue. The security of my computers is more
important.
So, in my case, WEP is acceptable. It would keep a casual war driver
away (since I usually don't use it enough to make it worth their time
to break, they'd be sitting outside for days), it keeps visitors
happy, and exposes me to a level of insecurity I'm prepared to live
with.
Hmmm...I see your point though. If I turned wep off, things would not
change that much ;-)
I've really been rambling.....
Cheers!
Shyamal
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