[NMLUG] Linux Router/Firewall

[peter at espen.net (Peter Espen)]

On Tue, 4 May 2004, Anthony Martinez wrote:

> On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 09:19:43PM -0600, Ed Heron
> carved this out of pure phosphors:
> > From: "Mike Garfias" <mike@garfias.org>
> >
> > > Yeah, its M$, but it works, and I didn't want to pay for a real WAP, it
> > just
> > > wasn't worth it to me.  The firmware could use a bit of work, it doesn't
> > let
> > > me hide the SSID, but at least does 128bit WEP, and does MAC filtering.
> >
> >   I hid the SSID on my WAP, but M$ stopped working.  I got the impression
> > that M$ requires the WAP to broadcast the SSID.  If I'm wrong, I'd like to
> > know, cause hiding the SSID would be cute.  Does turning off the SSID
> > improve security much?
>
> No. Tools such as Kismet will listen to the packets and a) notice a stealthed
> network, and b) attempt to destealth it. It's more trouble than it's worth.
>

Sure, that's true, but "more trouble than it's worth"?  I don't agree.
It's really no trouble and can't hurt.

Here's a comment from dslreports regarding hiding SSIDs:

Disabling the SSID in the beacon only keeps a tool such as NetStumbler
from seeing your AP. Tools like Kismet or AirSnort will see them no matter
what and will capture weak keys, flag networks responding to probe
requests, list the MAC address of the AP and any associating clients, show
the IP range of the network and help to crack the WEP keys.