Wireless Vulnerabilities to Know

Wireless systems are vulnerable to all the different attacks that wired networks are vulnerable to. However, because these protocols use radio frequency signals for data emanation, they have an additional weakness: All radio frequency signals can be easily intercepted. To intercept 802.11x traffic, all you need is a PC with an appropriate 802.11x card installed. Many networks will regularly broadcast their name (known as an SSID broadcast) to announce their presence. Simple software on the PC can capture the link traffic in the wireless AP and then process this data in order to decrypt account and password information.

One method of “protecting” the network that is often recommended is to turn off the SSID broadcast. ...

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