The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, overseers of all things wireless, has given the final 802.11n wireless Ethernet standard its seal of approval.

The 802.11n standard, which promises data rates exceeding 300Mbps, took exactly seven years from its inception, or six years from the completion of its first draft standard.

“More than 400 individuals from equipment and silicon suppliers, service providers, systems integrators, consultant organizations and academic institutions from more than 20 countries participated in a seven-year effort leading to IEEE 802.11n’s ratification,” the IEEE said.

“This was an extraordinarily wide-ranging technical challenge that required the sustained effort and concentration of a terrific variety of participants. When we started in 2002, many of the technologies addressed in 802.11n were university research topics and had not been implemented.”

The IEEE also said that devices based on any one of some dozen interim 802.11n draft specs are compatible with the final standard. This statement puts a long-standing debate about potential interoperability woes for the earliest 802.11n devices to rest.

New products based on the final standard are expected for the new year as the complete document will not be published until mid-October.

Japanese computer scientists claim that they’ve developed a new exploit (PDF) that will forge packets on a WPA-encrypted WiFi connections in about 60 seconds.

The exploit gives attackers a way to read small bursts of encrypted information sent between computers and routers that use WiFi Protected Access (WPA). The exploit was developed by Hiroshima University’s Toshihiro Ohigashi of Hiroshima University and Kobe University’s Masakatu Morii, both of whom will further discuss their findings at a September 25th conference in Hiroshima.

This paper has proposed a practical message falsification attack on any WPA implementation. Our attack is a method that applies the Beck-Tews attack to the MITM [man in the middle] attack, and can falsify an encrypted short packet (e.g. ARP packet). We have given a strategy for the MITM attack and the method for reducing the execution time of the attack. As a result, the execution time of our attack becomes about one minute in the best case. Therefore, our attack can execute on any WPA implementation, practically.

The new finding is an improvement to a 2008 WPA exploit known as the “Beck-Tews Attack” which could forge packets in about 15 minutes. Both Beck-Tews and the new exploit capitalize on small packets, such as ARP and DNS, to recover the keys used to encrypt individual packets. Armed with these keys, an attacker can intercept or falsify packets with little to no interruption to user services.

Though it all sounds rather scary, some sites have been playing up the insecurity angle without acknowledging the large caveats tangentially mentioned by the research paper:

• This exploit can only be used to falsify short packets like DNS and ARP. While an attacker could theoretically redirect you to unsavory/malicious sites, the attacker does not have an open pipe to your WiFi data.
• The exploit only works on WPA networks that use TKIP security keys as opposed to AES. Most residential routers allow you to choose between the two, and some even permit for AES+TKIP. WiFi users who have chosen WPA+AES or WPA2 are completely immune to the attack.

All in all it is an exciting (or frightening) development in the world of security research, but it’s still a far cry from the exploits that can bust WEP connections wide open in seconds.

According to their daily spam, all Barnes & Noble stores now have free wifi.

American Airlines is getting wifi on domestic flights.

Brace yourself! It’s weird/creepy doodad day for this edition of G’n'G:

• For $279, the SAD clock promises to elevate the mood of those suffering from seasonal affective disorder. We’re not really sure what blue light is going to do in lieu of UV or natural sunlight, but who’s counting?
• Not satisfied with your current approach to being a creeper? Perhaps the sleepy bunny webcam will help you achieve your goals. Ick.
• The best use of USB ever comes in the form of this microscope with 200x magnification and 1600×1200 resolution.
• A new coating developed by Rensselaer Polytechnic allows for photovoltaic cells to capture 96.2% of the sun’s rays from any angle. (We lied. This one is neither weird nor creepy).
• Nothing spells “awesome” like a mask that molests your face in the name of comfort.
• How about a robot controlled via WiFi by some Ruby code running on a jailbroken iPhone?

We don’t even want to know what evil could be done with the bunny and the microscope.

It’s that time of the week! The little email category for neat (or lame) gadgets has reached critical mass:

• This Sanyo wifi-enabled internet radio is actually pretty awesome. There’s no telling how long devices like this may last given the cost of licensing for streaming music, but it will be a fun ride.
• What’s 125″ diagonal, curved, 1mm thin, weighs 7.9 pounds and only boasts a 960×360 resolution? Why it’s the Shinoda OLED display.
• Netbooks are gaining a lot of press lately, so we’re happy to add to the pile with this review of the Acer Aspire One.
• If you’re not in the mood for the $300 Blackberry Bold released today, maybe you’ll like the Curve 8900. Previously known as the Javelin, it’s a Bold-derived model free of 3G.
• While eInk is very cool, Sharp has gone one step further to demonstrate an eInk display that can retain its image sans power.
• Motorola’s ZN25 packs 5 megapixels of creepy, stalker power.
• The new line of Ventro cases from Asus can be dismantled and arranged for shipping at just a few inches thick.
• Just $130 will land you Western Digital’s newest HDMI-capable hard drive-based TV streamer. This item is a steal for the price.
• Asus, still obsessed with diluting their popular Eee name, has released what amounts to a nettop. Weren’t these a bad idea the first time?

Aside from RIM’s official unveiling of the Storm, not much is at play in the world of gadgets today. Nevertheless, here are a few links to get you started:

• Harnessing the power of frickin’ laser beams for 20Gbps terrestrial wireless? 10Gbps at 800m? Daddy like!
• Just in case you haven’t heard, Intel released the Core 2 Duo E7300 and E5200 some weeks back. While you probably wouldn’t want to court the E5200, the 7xxx series is rather a fantastic bargain.
• RIM’s BlackBerry Storm was officially unveiled. It supports quad-band GSM, EV-DO Rev. A, HSPA/UMTS, no WiFi, a weird clicky touchscreen, a wacky app store and some other bits and bobs. Give it a peek if you’re a smartphone afficianado.
• AMD will soon start pushing its GPU-on-CPU “Fusion” technology pretty hard. To prep the market for its coming, AMD is resorting to a bizarre and arguably useless utility to “prep your computer for gaming.” Seriously, it’s just weird.

As usual, check back to this post as news rolls in throughout the day.