Brian Krebs has a post today on a Windows wireless networking “feature” which can be somewhat of a security risk. You see, it seems that With wireless networking enabled, Windows remembers the last wireless SSID that you connected to, so let’s say you were at a public Wireless access point called “Bob’s hotel” and you carry your laptop somewhere else. When the machine boots up, Windows tries to find “Bob’s hotel”, but of course, it’s not available at this other location, so… it assigns a 169.254.x.x ip address and broadcasts looking for “Bob’s hotel” the most recent wireless lan.
Tag: wireless
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How to use wireless networking on a laptop
This is one that I run into from time to time. Most laptops the last year or two (actually maybe a bit longer), have built in wireless networking. This is great and makes for easy access to wireless access points just about anywhere. In fact, most current operating systems (Windows XP included) usually do a great job of detecting available networks. (Sometimes they do too good a job which is why wireless security is an issue, but we’ll save that for a future post.) I’ve run into several laptops over the last few years though that supposedly had wireless networking, but the user hadn’t been able to access any wireless networks with the laptop. Usually it’s an easy fix….
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The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 7
So, according to D-Link there is a short list of access points that the DWL-800AP+ will repeat for. They are all d-link branded access points. It seems that there have been firmware updates to improve the compatibility with more models (of d-link access points.) Some of the incompatibilities have been with WEP encryption from what I’ve read.
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The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 6
Ok, so here’s the synopsis… I’ve spent the last few articles setting up a D-link DWL-800AP+ as a repeater for a linksys WAP11 (v. 1.1) As of the end of the last entry I had a bit of a problem with WEP but that seems to have been resolved now and here I am to fill you in on what went wrong. It was really a simple mistake. When I copied and pasted over from the linksys….
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The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 5
So, I set a WEP key on the linksys (WAP11 v. 1.1) and it promptly disappeared… it stopped responding (over the WIRED network) to my wap11gui admin tool. I quickly realized that part of the problem is from having two network cards attached (both in the 192.168.0 range)… disconnect the usb card and reconnect. Then I use the “security” tab to enable WEP (128-bit)
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The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 4
Ok, so now I had to add the new D-Link’s MAC address to the list of authorized MAC’s in the Linksys WAP11 (v. 1.1) For this, I call on wap11gui. Used to (since I use linux), I would have to suffer through a Windows boot on the laptop and balance the laptop on the edge of the bed and connect through usb to the linksys… now I can just administer it from my desk. Nice… Anyway, I log into that and Visit the “security” tab and “Authorized Mac”, and add the d-Link DWL-800AP+ to the list.
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The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 3
So, now that I was “in” the DWL-800AP+ it was time to see if I could set it up as a repeater. I visited the “wireless” tab of the web based configuration and chose Repeater mode instead of AP mode and saw that I would need the Mac address of the access point that I wanted to “repeat” signal from. In this case it’s the old Linksys WAP11 v. 1.1 So, I opened up a console and (as root) did an arpping 192.168.0.250 (the ip address of my Linksys AP). Got the reply back and typed it in.
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The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 2
For starters, I hooked the D-link DWL-800AP+ up and connected it through a crossover cable to my usb network card. That way I could access it exclusively on one adapter and look online for information with the other adapter, which came in quite handy. The first thing I found was that by default the dwl-800ap+ was configured to use 192.168.0.30 as it’s IP address. This one was not configured with the default settings. (Used / via ebay….) So, I did an nmap -sT 192.168.0.* -e eth1 which scanned the whole 192.168.0. list of addresses using my eth1 adapter (as opposed to the default adapter eth0)
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The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 1
I’ve got a single access point for my wireless network layer at the house and unfortunately have at least one real “dead spot” in the house. As luck would have it that dead spot is at the couch… so for some time I’ve looked at ways to extend the wireless network range or other ways. One such possibility of course, is a repeater. These days, most wireless repeaters I see either only work with their brand access point. (So a linksys repeater would only work with certain models of linksys access point…) Or… the repeater would only repeat 802.11g *(the newer wireless) traffic. Given that everything I’ve got is still 802.11b I didn’t really want to do a new round of hardware for ALL the wireless devices (the access point still works….) So… looking for a repeater I went.
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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 19 – What about when you’re not on your home network?
When you’re not at your home network is probably one of those times you should be more on your guard. Wireless access points are very common and a greatly useful thing, but there are some steps you should take to protect yourself, your pc and the data stored there. First it’s worth having a personal firewall for just this type of situation. You obviously can’t make use of a second hardware firewall when hooking up to a wireless LAN. (Although I would think that a small “wireless bridge” adapter of a wireless device to a wired ethernet port MIGHT be able to serve that function. It depends on how it’s implemented.)