My Saturday with Netstumbler...

[Jason Costomiris <jcostom () jasons org>]

We've all read countless articles about WLAN security.  Have they done any
good?  Based on my experience Saturday afternoon, I'd have to say that
all of the press that WLAN (in)security has received hasn't helped.

I was bored Saturday afternoon, so I got in the car, hooked up my 
Netstumbling gear and went for a ride in around a major east coast US
city.  For the curious, my rig consists of:

IBM ThinkPad T21 (P3/800, 512MB RAM, Win2k) sitting on passenger's seat
Orinoco Gold USB WLAN device (w/10ft USB cable) sitting on back deck
Garmin eTrex GPS with serial interface cable sitting on dashboard
Netstumbler 0.3.23 (set to detect APs, but not reconfigure WLAN card)

Over the course of about 90 minutes, covering an area about 10 blocks 
by 30 blocks, driving on only the more "interesting" streets, I discovered
119 Access Points.  Of course, my findings here are anecdotal, and may or 
may not be representative of what's going on out there in general.

Thoughts on WEP usage...  We all know that WEP is not a reasonable 
solution for keeping your data private, however, it does help prevent 
casual lanjacking.  Firewalling off the APs from the rest of the
network and using IPSec clients to connect between the WLAN clients and
the firewall give a much more complete security model.  However, WEP is
certainly better than nothing.

Highlights of my findings:
- Only 23.53% of APs found were using WEP
- 80.77% of Linksys APs used the default SSID, "linksys"
- 2 out of the 3 Apple AirPort base stations had WEP turned on

Detailed findings follow:

Percentage of Total APs by vendor:
Addtron                   3      2.52%
AMI                       2      1.68%
Agere (Orinoco/Lucent)   47     39.50%
Apple                     3      2.52%
Cisco (Aironet)          20     16.81%
D-Link                    4      3.36%
Linksys                  26     21.85%
Netgear                   2      1.68%
SMC                       2      1.68%
Other                    10      8.40%
--------------------------------------
Total                   119

WEP Usage By Vendor:
            Clear        WEP        % Using WEP
Addtron       3             0             0.00%
AMI           2             0             0.00%
Agere        37            10            21.28%
Apple         1             2            66.67%
Cisco        11             9            45.00%
D-Link        4             0             0.00%
Linksys      21             5            19.23%
Netgear       2             0             0.00%
SMC           1             1            50.00%
Other         9             1            10.00%
-----------------------------------------------
Total        91            28            23.53%

APs With Default SSID By Vendor:
           Default SSID     Other SSID    % With Default
Addtron        2                1             66.67%
AMI            1                1             50.00%
Agere          1               46              2.13%
Apple          0                3              0.00%
Cisco          1               19              5.00%
D-Link         2                2             50.00%
Linksys       21                5             80.77%
Netgear        0                2              0.00%
SMC            1                1             50.00%
Other          0               10              0.00%
--------------------------------------------------------
Total         29               90             24.37%

-- 
Jason Costomiris <><           |  Technologist, geek, human.
jcostom {at} jasons {dot} org  |  http://www.jasons.org/ 
          Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
                    My account, My opinions.