Notes on Wireless
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a Netgear MA111 USB 802.11b adapter for an older laptop we took on a trip. I was about to buy a PCMCIA version (it was a laptop, afterall), but realized in the store that I wouldn’t be able to use if for anything but a laptop once I got home. The USB one, on the other hand, can be plugged into my Mini-ITX router, giving me a Linux-based AP once the software becomes available. If the HostAP software never comes out, then in the worst case I pick up a Linksys, and my network topology will still have my wired computers behind my own firewall, rather than the Linksys one.
This isn’t happening anytime soon: we don’t own a laptop, so the wonders of WiFi are lost to me in our apartment. On the road, it was great: pull into any Starbucks/Kinko’s/some Border’s, and you got Internet access through T-Mobile. The days of hunting for obscure, out-of-the-way Internet cafes are past.
So, for the future, here are some notes on securing the whole thing. The main point of departure is a Slashdot posting discussing wireless risk management. This leads to an ArsTechnica article for a wireless security How-To. I’ll read these later; the main point is to bookmark. BugTraq also had a thread on wireless best practices, but their web servers are down right now, so I can’t link to it. Anyway, Googling for those terms gives pages like this one.
Oh, one amusing thing from the BugTraq thread was to use an SSID of SST-PR-1. Apparently, this is the SSID used by Sears service trucks, and are therefore weirdly ubiquitous and less likely to draw the attention of wardrivers.