Topic awaiting preservation: Fun with wireless networks

A relative came around to show me their new laptop they bought and when we booted it up it acquired a wireless network connection and was online. I was a tad concerned because I thought it was a sign my wireless network's petticoats were showing but it wasn't (I think - I was confident it wasn't but there is always that sneaking suspicion ).

So basically are there any diagnostic things I can install on the laptop to give me further info and the signal was weak so how far could it be travelling (I assume its probably the neighbours and if so I want to let them know the situation)?

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Emps

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if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Well, there are things (software) that you can install on your laptop, to get more information about possible "hotspots" (APs, or Access Points) within your wireless receiving range. I don't know how legal some of them are, or if you will be able to find them easily - I know as I was working for Siemens, that we had a number of "Wireless Utility" programs that could do an amazing number of things - that we used for our test area. However, I'm sure that most of these tools are not available to the public! I won't tell you about the type of tools the Military uses.

Basically, such tools can read the SSID (assuming it is set to visible), whether or not it is encrypted, the signal strength, the type of signal (802.11b or 802.11g), the MAC address of the Router (AP), and the type of Encryption (WEP 64, WEP 128, WPA, etc). More advanced software can hack WEP 64 and WEP 128 - WPA is a bit harder - you need to get them with the first funk connection attempt (like early mornings, etc as they turn on their Router, of after a Router crash) - often turning the circuit breaker off for a building helps (or overloading one) and other advanced SW can even simulate different MAC Addresses for MAC Filter-type defences.

Hope that helps!

As for the range - around a 100 yards is a normal line-of-sight range - this then suffers drstically from walls, and other hinderances. One wall can absorb up to 80% of your wireless reception, depending on the sort of material that it is made of, and how thick it is.

Sometimes my laptop gets a wireless connection in my house and I have no idea whos network it is, it is kind of awsome.

every wireless adapter I've ever seen had a status indictator in the tray that you could launch a sniffer of sorts from (bad term but I dunno what to call it), showing all wireless networks in range and naming them by their SSID and saying whether they were protected access or wide open. I'd think the laptop has such a thing, if it's Windows XP you can look at your network connections and launch just such a utility from there.

FYI mac address filters are kinda worthless since they're sent in plain text before the connection is ever made.

quote:

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depending on the sort of material that it is made of, and how thick it is.

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and what angle you're trying to get through it at, that's a biggie, 90 degrees goes through less wall than 5 degrees.

I use PocketWinc on my ipaq. It comes in handy at client sites when troubleshooting wireless issues. It's very fast at discovery. I drive down a 65MPH road on my way home everyday, and it's always picking up the APs in the apartment complex several hundred feet from the road.

Cirond, the company that makes it, has a PC version available as well.

As JKMabry mentioned, there are utilities to sniff WEP codes, MAC addresses and other things out of the air. You can then spoof you info to gain access.

If you have an access point, you should, at the very least, be doing WPA and Mac filtering.

And change your WPA access byte strings regularly too, if at all possible... and if your code generator has a random generator seeder that you can alter, alter the seed each time too.


Justice 4 Pat Richard

I read an article on the BBC about piggy-backing wireless networks, something that neighbours often find themselves doing, apparently there's no law against it at the moment.


I don't mean to highjack this thread but I've been having a little problem with a wireless PCI card, it's making my computer startup really slow, It boots fine, I can login in seconds, but as soon as I see my desktop, I can't do much of anything for about 2 minutes until my wireless card has found the network, is there anything I can do to remedy this?

Cheers,

Blaise: I can't help you with this but I have heard of people speeding up there start up time by stopping windows connecting to a network on startup, i.e waiting for DHCP, a network domain or something, this may not apply to you. But if you google speeding up your start time, you may come across a solution that way.
But I would have thought any solution would mean waiting for the same process after the OS has loaded.

Emps: The distance is really dependant on what it travels through, I know thats obvious , but with nothing in the way it should go 100m or something(thats with 10mbits afaik), but in my house its about 10m or less through one or two walls(not much further in a friends house). If its a neighbour its probably your next door/nearest neighbour. This was with a 3Com router and an unknown brand NIC, dont know what my friend uses but his is a lot more usuable than mine(I layed 40m of UTP cable going around/above my house, can't wait for the lightning to get me.). You could set up a pringles can to work out which direction its coming from I guess. I don't think the technology is built for brick houses from what I've seen. Or get two laptops and compare their signal strength, when there equal the source will be roughly perpendicular, like the way you know a sound is coming from infront of you, but with laptops as ears.

If they have a shared folder you could leave them a message there.
" there's no law against it at the moment." <- just use it untill there is Just be nice and don't hog their bandwidth, hehe