Critical Wireless Flaw Found
A serious wireless network technology flaw that could lead to the breakdown of some critical infrastructures in just five seconds has been identified by Queensland University of Technology's Information Security Research Centre, a finding that is likely to have worldwide ramifications.
Source: PCWorldLooi's Ph.D students--Christian Wullems, Kevin Tham, and Jason Smith--discovered the flaw while investigating mechanisms for defending wireless devices against being hacked. The findings are to be presented to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Wireless Telecommunication Symposium in California this week. In effect the flaw allows for the disruption of the standard 802.11b radio frequency developed by the IEEE to transmit data. The result is that the wireless devices cannot communicate with each other and service is denied. "The 802.11b network is supported by a number of computing platforms including Macs, PCs, and handheld devices and in 99.9 per cent of all cases is the only way to connect to wireless networks," Professor Looi says. "In order to exploit the vulnerability potential attackers only need a common wireless adaptor which retails for about [$35] and instead of using it to enable their computer to access a network, they can change its coding to interfere with transmission.
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