RE: [fw-wiz] Interlopers on the WLAN

From: Philip J. Koenig (pjklist@ekahuna.com)
Date: 11/06/02 

From: "Philip J. Koenig" <pjklist@ekahuna.com>
To: firewall-wizards@honor.icsalabs.com
Date: Wed Nov  6 09:10:33 2002

On 6 Nov 2002 at 8:42, Frank O'Dwyer boldly uttered:

> So if you set your network up in the same sort of configuration, without
> even a rudimentary attempt to restrict access, no clue that the network
> is private, and route every packet thrown at you, then how on earth is
> anyone supposed to know what you intended. Basically, it's unreasonable
> to expect people to read your mind.

Personally when I started the thread I was thinking more in terms of
the whole practice of "wardriving" and whether it's defensible from a
legal standpoint or not.

I was not referring to clueful individuals and organizations/
institutions that properly take care of the security issues on their
WLANs. I was referencing the very clear fact that a huge amount of
these WLANs are operated by non-technical consumers who, in my view,
cannot really be expected to understand all the technical/security
issues at play, particularly if the vendors not only ship the product
with an insecure default configuration, but also do a poor job of
educating the consumer about the issues at hand.

Given that there are so many WLANs out there that are owned/operated
by these types of users, it makes me think that to assume a WLAN is
"public" simply because a non-technical user set it up in it's most
likely configuration is a stretch to say the least.

Further on the legal/abuse front: I predict the next wave of spammers
will be heavily exploiting open WLANs to anonymize themselves while
sending out spam, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see DNS-based
blacklists of open WLANs pop up, just like the various ones that are
now operating to flag open SMTP relays and other potential spam
sources. 

--
Philip J. Koenig                                       
pjklist@ekahuna.com
Electric Kahuna Systems -- Computers & Communications for the New 
Millenium

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