Hackproofing Your Wireless Network 1st Edition

With the arrival of IEEE 802.11b (a.k.a. WiFi) and other wireless networking technologies on the market comes a wave of stories about snoops intercepting sensitive LAN traffic from out in the company parking lot or across the concourse at the airport. Hack Proofing Your Wireless Network takes a look at strategies for defending wireless LANs--those based on Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11a as well as WiFi--against signal interception and other attacks peculiar to their wireless nature. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of background information on WiFi (as well as on security principles in general), and this is related to wireless network security only tangentially. Though this material represents unneeded padding, the bulk of the book is made up of useful information about security strategies and defensive configuration. There's also a fair bit of information about the security characteristics of some top-selling wireless networking products.

In a section on choosing WiFi access points, the authors give a very explicit list of requirements (the ability to disable service-set identifier broadcasts, 128-bit Wired Equivalent Protocol--WEP--and so on), and list at least three real products (by make and model) that fit the specifications. They then proceed to show how to choose the most secure configuration options on each of the featured products, including the Cisco Systems Aironet and the Agere ORiNOCO. Configuration instructions are easy to follow and illustrated in detail. Information on the offensive side of the equation is shallower--the authors point out that it's possible to drive around, looking for unsecured wireless access points and that WEP has security flaws. Still, this book is one of the first on security for wireless networks, and it provides a lot of good information to the administrators of such networks. --David Wall

Topics covered: The special security characteristics of wireless networks (primarily including, but not limited to, those operating under the IEEE 802.11 standards) and some recommended procedures for the administrators of such networks. Wired Equivalent Protocol (WEP), MAC filtering, and virtual private networks (VPNs) tailored for use in wireless environments get particularly admirable coverage.

Neal O’Farrell (Technical Editor) is founder and CEO of security training firm Hackademia Inc., where he oversees the development of more than 30 Web-based security training courses. Neal is a panel expert and regular columnist on SearchSecurity.com and was recently elected Chair of the first Cybercrime on Wall Street Conference. He has written more than one hundred articles and three books, appearing in publications as diverse as Business Week, Information Week, NetWorker, and Wireless Design News. With a career in information security that spans nearly two decades, Neal was recently described by the Institute for International Research as one of the world’s top 20 security experts. Neal got his first taste of wireless security in the mid-1980s when he was asked by the Irish government to develop a security system for the nation’s fledgling cellular network.

Eric Ouellet (CISSP) is a Senior Partner with Secure Systems Design Group, a network design and security consultancy based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He specializes in the implementation of networks and security infrastructures from both a design and a hands-on perspective. Eric has been responsible for designing some of the leading Public Key Infrastructure deployments currently in use and for devising operational policy and procedures to meet the Electronic Signature Act (E-Sign) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). He regularly speaks at leading security conferences and teaches networking and CISSP classes. He is currently working on two upcoming titles with Syngress Publishing, Building a Cisco Wireless LAN (ISBN: 1-928994-58-X) and Sniffer Network Optimization and Troubleshooting Handbook (ISBN: 1-931836-57-4).

Tony Bautts is a Senior Security Consultant with Astech Consulting. He currently provides security advice and architecture for clients in the San Francisco Bay area. His specialties include intrusion detection systems, firewall design and integration, post-intrusion forensics, bastion hosting, and secure infrastructure design. Tony’s security experience has led him to work with Fortune 500 companies in the United States as well as two years of security consulting in Japan.