Wow, so not only does it announce the network name it's looking for, but it also puts the laptop into a generic subnet so that it can easily be found by other machines.
What the article doesn't make clear is if the machine drops WEP/WPA encryption when it switches into adhoc mode, if it doesn't your machine is still protected. Any machine without some sort of connection encryption should be considered to be on a public network, and should take precautions to firewall/protect itself.
I'm in the process of installing windows 2000 on my mom's laptop, which has a wireless card in it, some experimentation might be in order to see exactly how this flaw works.
Well, WEP is of somewhat less utility with ad-hoc networks. It is supported, but it's not the default, since the whole purpose of ad-hoc is supposed to be easily finding and communicating with other machines without too much communication. I'm with bellinghman on this one; people aren't upset enough about these things to demand secure computers, so MS won't provide them.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-01-16 02:27 pm (UTC)What the article doesn't make clear is if the machine drops WEP/WPA encryption when it switches into adhoc mode, if it doesn't your machine is still protected. Any machine without some sort of connection encryption should be considered to be on a public network, and should take precautions to firewall/protect itself.
I'm in the process of installing windows 2000 on my mom's laptop, which has a wireless card in it, some experimentation might be in order to see exactly how this flaw works.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-16 08:33 pm (UTC)