Ad-Hoc Wireless Networking – What are the dangers?

There are many people using a wireless network connection at home, or the office, and connect to the wireless network via a wireless Access Point (AP), and this connection method is called “Infrastructure Mode”. When using this secure wireless network configured in “Infrastructure Mode”, you are using MAC address filtering which uses some level of secure data encryption. You will have made changes to your AP security configuration in order to prevent others from using your network link or from capturing your data.

Those not using “Infrastructure Mode”, and configured to transfer data directly machine to machine, or “Ad-Hoc“, should be aware of of the following security problems. Ad-Hoc networking allows you to communicate with other wireless Ethernet systems directly without the need of a wireless access point. This Ad-Hoc peer to peer configuration works well, however the problem is that people tend to just set it up and forget about it. Whilst at home this may not pose any problem, travelling could cause you many security problems.

Classic examples of this lack of security using an Ad-Hoc wifi environment may be found among the many commuters traveling to work by train or even aeroplane, using their laptops to catch up with their daily tasks whilst transiting to or from the office.Those laptops able to use an Ad-Hoc WiFi network can be identified by other local computers with WiFi ability.

It is quite possible to see another laptop’s wireless Ethernet availability and access it’s hard drive by using the comand structure

“net use * <”file://\\otherlaptopIPAddress\C$”>\\otherlaptopIPAddress\C$” ” /USER:administrator”.

You will get confirmation of successfull connection and a network link to it’s C drive. This will be entirely possible when there is a lack of security on any laptop computer starting with securing it’s computer’s local administrator account which often has no password configured.

Data that you may have forgotten about but which could be viewable to the public could be your customer business listings or even your personal finances and banking information.

The fact is, whether it be “Infrastructure Mode”, or “Ad-Hoc” wireless communications, if not properly configured and secured, can and will pose a major security risk.

So, If your are using wireless Ethernet, no matter what configuration, follow these few rules and keep yourself secure against most common types of security failures.

• Use strong passwords, especially those that have administrative control over your system.
• Use some sort of wireless encryption – anything is better than nothing.
• Where possible, use MAC addresses filtering to restrict unwanted systems from attaching to your wireless network.