HP to bring WiFi to the masses

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/06/24/020624hnhpwlan.xml">http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/06/24/020624hnhpwlan.xml</a><br /><br />"HEWLETT-PACKARD will provide hotels, airports and other venues with wireless Internet access for either their own employees or the general public, it announced Monday, a day before the official opening of TECHXNY in New York."<br /><br />HP will do the installations, partnering with Cisco, iPass, Aptilo Networks, and Boingo Wireless. 802.11b will be used. They can install a single or dual purpose network, allowing employees of the facility, like an airport, to access and exchange data wirelessly and securely while allowing the public general internet access.

[Will T Smith]

802.11b is currently WAAAAYY!!! to insecure to deploy so widely.

This is a hackers dream. Lot's of organizations deploying wide open pipes that hackers can sniff around on.

What's worse is that as more devices come "pre-configured" with 802.11b, many users will be unaware at the very EXTREME level of danger that they're exposing themselves to.

Coupled with Microsoft's pourous security, this is a breeding ground for worms and trojans. Physical proximity will become prominent in infection as previous WAN barriers evaporate into relatively easy LAN (and protocol level) access.

[Ed Hansberry]

First of all, the consumer portion of these networks is open. It is impossible to hack on open network because there is nothing to hack. Sort of like picking a lock on a door with no lock.

Second, you can implement a secure WLAN with 802.11b, but it requires technical expertise, and HP will have this knowledge. You can restrict the corporate side of these WLANS to specific MAC addresses, implement VPN's to get into the "closed" side of the network and enable WEP. WEP is crackable to be sure, but it takes several hours to do so, and that still doesn't get you into the VPN.

Finally, 802.11i will enable TKIP, Temporal Key Integrity Protocol. This generates a new key every 10KB of data. Far far faster than even the fastest hacker with the fastest computer could crack the key. Most existing 802.11b certified hardware can be upgraded to implement TKIP. Those that can't will still work with TKIP devices, but just rely on WEP.

[disconnected]

Seems like it would have been a nice opportunity to announce a new iPAQ with built-in WiFi.

[Inaki C]

I use WiFi massively, but I wonder whether there is any potential harm for health from using these waves all around my office.

Is there any serious study about how healthy is WiFi frequency ?
I know 2.4ghz is the chosen frequency for consumer devices (like a microwave) but ...still I am concerned.

In my IBM Thinkpad there is visible warning about the correct distance I should keep when working with WiFi. It is 30cm., however when I use my ipaq with a Compaq WL110 WiFi card I have the device in my hands!

Does anyone have information about health and the ubiquitous 2.4Ghz frequency ?

[ChrisD]

802.11b is currently WAAAAYY!!! to insecure to deploy so widely.

This is a hackers dream. Lot's of organizations deploying wide open pipes that hackers can sniff around on.

What's worse is that as more devices come "pre-configured" with 802.11b, many users will be unaware at the very EXTREME level of danger that they're exposing themselves to.

Coupled with Microsoft's pourous security, this is a breeding ground for worms and trojans. Physical proximity will become prominent in infection as previous WAN barriers evaporate into relatively easy LAN (and protocol level) access.

So you've heard of many different hacks around the existing 802.11b networks available from Boingo?

If the private network requires 802.11x certificates with a different SSID, I don't see any easy way for hackers to get into the network.

[Ed Hansberry]

Great point Chris. HP is using Cisco WLAN hardware and software solutions from iPass, Aptilo Networks, and Boingo Wireless. 802.11b in and of itself is not secure, but in many cases I think it would be easier to physically break into a building and find a CAT5 outlet vs cracking into some of the WLAN solutions available.

[laner]

From my reading the CISCO card makes filtering by MAC address useless. It's possible to assign the MAC address in software and you can assign a different MAC address to each of the channels.

The other item I had in issue with it is using a VPN and WEP together. If the VPN is setup well, you are wasting a lot of computing power adding WEP on top.