Re: IEEE spectrum article on Wifi Worms

A distributed attack could easily cut this down to ((65,000) / Num of  
infected APs within range) words. In a dense urban environment it's  
feasible that a distributed attack could cut the 51 day window down to  
a single 24 hour period. A better solution would be to not allow  
configuration by WAN or WLAN by default. The real problem is that  
there are thousands of unprotected APs with default passwords already  
out there....but only a fraction are easily crackable/flashable (open  
platform systems).

Tyler Booth // President
ph. 503.548.2000 | fx. 503.548.2002
921 SW Washington St, Suite 224
Portland OR 97205


On Jan 23, 2008, at 4:31 PM, Michael Weinberg wrote:

> On Jan 23, 2008, at 2:10 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
>
>> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan08/5877
>>
>> The article doesn't explain how it is possible to inject new firmware
>> into a wifi router without a hardwire link;  the APs I know about
>> are normally managed over the user-side hardwired ethernet ports.
>
> It seems to me that a fairly simple defense would be to only allow 5
> login attempts from a single DHCP lease. With a typically configured
> router (24 hour lease time, /24), that would be only 1270 login
> attempts a day, or a ponderous 51 days to try every word in the
> article-referenced 65,000 word dictionary.
>
> Changing the password to anything but the default would result in a
> reasonably secure device without forcing the average (lazy) user to
> introduce difficult to recall passwords.
>
> Michael
>
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