New encryption technology closes WLAN security loopholes

[Rodney Thayer]

At 08:10 PM 9/21/01 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

>At 10:34 AM -0400 9/20/2001, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> >"R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com> writes:
> >> [1] "New encryption technology closes WLAN security loopholes"
> >
> >We don't need a new proprietary technology. IPSec tunnels from the
> >wireless node to the base station work just fine, and are actually
> >secure on top of it!
> >
(From: "Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold at world.std.com>)

>As I understand things, and please correct me if I am misinformed,
>IPSec is still quite complex to install and setup.

And wireless is a bit of a bitch too -- I'm able to set it up with
ease now that I've got four different kinds of cards to switch back
and forth... wild variation in management interfaces in the Win32 world...


>While we are on the topic, it seems to me that the other implication
>of 802.11 is that the Ethernet backbone in most offices can no longer
>be considered secure.

It never was.  "Get a life, use IPsec (or TLS, or SSH, or PGP, or SMIME...)"
is (a) standard answer to link layer security.

At this time, I'm much more worried about some Exodus employee going
postal and selling out to my competitor and tapping the copper wires,
than some drive-by cypherpunk sniffing my 802.11 network.
(Picking on Exodus because their economic fortunes have blemishes, not
to say other colo's and ISP's are perfect...)





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