RE: Mapping wireless LANS from the wired side

From: Joe Shaw (jshawat_private)
Date: Mon Aug 20 2001 - 16:51:50 PDT

  • Next message: Mike.Ruscher@CSE-CST.GC.CA: "RE: Mapping wireless LANS from the wired side"

    On Mon, 20 Aug 2001 Mike.Ruscher@CSE-CST.GC.CA wrote:
    
    > There is no guarantee that war-driving will find them all, especially when
    > they may roam and not always be up when sniffed by a wireless system. In any
    > case, this is irrelevant to the requirement at hand.
    
    I've done it both ways.  I worked for a large company that used
    802.11b to provide connectivity to the desktop.  Coming from the wireless
    side was a lot more effective and yeilds better results.  I understand
    you're working within a set of guidelines here, but using a hammer to
    drive screws is counterproductive unless you just like wasting time.
    
    There's no need for sniffing involved.  With an Aironet or Cisco card and
    the Cisco signal software I can walk around 802.11b enabled facilities and
    get the signal strength, signal quality and name of the AP I'm associated
    with.  As I walk around, I associate with more powerful AP's.  There's no
    way to do this from the wired side.  It's the same principle as "war
    driving" but on a much smaller scale.  This can easily be done with the
    BSD's as well.  Just loop ancontrol or equivalent for your card and record
    the AP you're associated with.  Some of us have been doing this in
    business districts since last year when we found a lot of people were
    using 802.11b in Downtown Houston.  It started innocently enough by just
    wanting to test the signal strength of our own AP's.  Sadly, others
    published before we even thought about doing it, but such is life.
    
    > It's like finding dial-up modems from the network side, not by war-dialling
    > (or by war-driving in this instance). In this case it should be a lot
    > easier, since everything is TCP/IP still. A list of company device/MAC
    > associations is all that would be necessary is my guess and not just
    > company/MAC associations. Collecting them is not a great hardship I suppose
    > though, by time-consuming and forever requiring support to be fresh and
    > complete.
    
    The problem is that some manufacturers aren't using different MAC
    addresses to diferentiate their wired stuff from their wireless stuff.
    Furthermore, some manufacturers don't even make their own wireless
    equipment and OEM it from others.  Xircom cards are OEM Cisco/Aironet.
    Dell is OEM Orinoco.  I'm sure there are counltess others.  Furthermore,
    an AP does not necessarily need a vaild IP address to put traffic on the
    wired network or be wired to sniff from the wireless side.
    
    If you want to be really evil, you don't even us an AP.  Just build a very
    small PC (libretto?) running whichever BSD or Linux you want, put in an
    Aironet card, start dsniff and you're done.  It will never be found by
    anyone looking without real RF gear unless you don't hide it well.  The
    reason is that I've found that when I put my Aironet 4800 PC card into
    promiscuous mode it completely loses the ability to send any information,
    including it's MAC address for ARP requests.  Put it in monitor mode, and
    you get raw 802.11 frames (for useful things like cracking WEP) with the
    same end result of no transmission of packets.  I do not take credit for
    the libretto idea, as it was not mine.  There are many of us doing our own
    wireless research, and we're all starting to collaborate now.  By the end
    of summer you'll see a lot more in the area of 802.11b attack tools.
    Take a look at sourceforge and you'll find several public projects.  I
    know of at least twice that many currently being developed under wraps.
    
    Regards,
    --
    Joseph W. Shaw II
    Network Security Specialist/CCNA
    Unemployed.  Will hack for food.  God Bless.
    Apparently I'm overqualified but undereducated to be employed.
    
    
    
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