To Protect, You Must Inspect

Non-technical attacks

These types of attacks exploit various human weaknesses, such as lack of awareness, carelessness, and being too trusting of strangers. There are also physical vulnerabilities that can give an attacker a leg up on firsthand access to your wireless devices. These are often the easiest types of vulnerabilities to take advantage of — and they can even happen to you if you’re not careful.

These attacks include

• Breaking into wireless devices that users installed on their own and left unsecured
• Social engineering attacks whereby a hacker poses as someone else and coaxes users into giving out too much information about your network
• Physically accessing APs, antennae, and other wireless infrastructure equipment to reconfigure it — or (worse) capture data off it

Network attacks

When it comes to the nitty-gritty bits and bytes, there are a lot of techniques the bad guys can use to break inside your wireless realm or at least leave it limping along in a nonworking state. Network-based attacks include _ Installing rogue wireless APs and “tricking” wireless clients into connecting to them

• Capturing data off the network from a distance by walking around, driving by, or flying overhead
• Attacking the networking transactions by spoofing MAC addresses (masquerading as a legitimate wireless user), setting up man-in-the-middle (inserting a wireless system between an AP and wireless client) attacks, and more
• Exploiting network protocols such as SNMP
• Performing denial-of-service (DoS) attacks
• Jamming RF signals

Software attacks

As if the security problems with the 802.11 protocol weren’t enough, we now have to worry about the operating systems and applications on wireless-client machines being vulnerable to attack. Here are some examples of software attacks:

• Hacking the operating system and other applications on wireless-client machines
• Breaking in via default settings such as passwords and SSIDs that are easily determined
• Cracking WEP keys and tapping into the network’s encryption system
• Gaining access by exploiting weak network-authentication systems