Wireless Flaw a Danger to Laptops

I observe that today with the ZoneAlarm Pro, but that network didn't appear on the Zones of ZAP...

 

Thread at DSLR:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15254748

BugTraq:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/421868/30/0/threaded

 

Thanks

 

It's part of the Windows boot up process so it's not just laptops. When you have a NIC card installed one of the things your pc does before windows loads is what is called DHCP discover...it looks for DHCP servers and asks them for an ip address. If you you have a DHCP server (a router for example) the router responds back and gives (assigns) you an ip address (you then get a 192.168.0.x for example). But if it can't find a DHCP server or lets say the DHCP server is down, your pc will "automcatically" assign itself a 169.254.x.x ip address. It's called APIPA...Automatic Private IP Addressing

It does that whether you're wireless or not. If you're on wireless...that's right it will look for Wifi networks but won't automatically connect to it unless it your own default connection. It simply says that these are the available networks.

 

Before everyone panics, take note of this paragraph:

"Anyway, you might be wondering now how you can make sure your Windows laptop is protected from this.....er, feature. First of all, if you are running any kind of network firewall -- including the firewall that comes built in to Windows XP -- you won't have to worry about some stranger connecting to your laptop. In fact, I had to shut down my firewall for both of us to successfully conduct our test."

 

Hi,
Furthermore, you can assign static ips to machines and block dhcp.
Mrk

 

Or do what I've done and use a separate app to control your wireless connection, which usually comes free with the wireless network adaptor and which doesn't have this problem.

 

In the NIC card's tcp/ip properties -----> alternate configuration tab

you can use a user configured "static" entry instead of it automatically defaulting to APIPA.