Wireless Communications

later update for AiroWizard 1.0 Beta revision 250 post: AiroWizard the WEP key recovering utility for Windows This project has been (most probably) discontinued at the request of TamoSoft Ltd., in the name of TamoSoft Ltd. and/or Atheros Communications. TamoSoft Ltd. forbids usage of their drivers outside of their applications, so... Now go and use CommView for WiFi for all your WEP recovering needs. Exclusively. Just leave it running for a couple of hours/days/weeks, and maybe you will be able to recover 64-bit WEP key. Oh yes, and don't forget to use Atheros chipset based wireless adapters. Exclusively, too. .............................. AiroWizard 1.0 Beta revision 250 will no longer be available for download on this website.

Tutorial Videos on how to use AiroWizard 1.0 Beta revision 250: Driver installation Failed driver installation AiroWizard's features and Fragmentation attack, Part1 AiroWizard's features and Fragmentation attack, Part2 download AiroWizard 1.0 Beta revision 250 You will need to download the Adapter Test Utility , a compatible adapter may show up under the generic name, "Atheros Wireless Network Adapter". If a compatible adapter has been detected, you can install CommView for WiFi.

A pigtail, is a short cable needed to connect the DIY antenna to a laptop or desktop wireless card and/or access point. A pigtail (sometimes called a laptop adapter cable) is a short length of microwave-friendly coaxial cable with connectors on both ends. It needs to be short because coaxial cable is very lossy at microwave frequencies, and the loss is proportional to the length of the cable.You can make you own (see below), but unless you have experience soldering small connectors to coax, spend you money on a ready-made pigtail. Since the DIY antenna uses a standard N-Female connector, the antenna end of the pigtail will need to be a standard N-Male connector. Look for quality N connectors, low loss silver-plated with gold contacts, not the cheaper silver contacts. If necessary, you can add a PCMCIA or USB adapter to your laptop that will accept the other end of the pigtail. Look for cards/adapters with external antenna connections! Type N connector (photo) is a threaded RF connector...

Yagi antenna, is a device that can help you amplify weak Wi-Fi Signals, so you can get an internet connection in areas where you may not have been able to in the past.

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BabuYAGA is a YAGI type directional antenna working well with all 2.4GHz wireless devices. Antenna's radiator is a precise designed printed circuit board element. Machine stamped directory element responsible for beam formatting gives excellent radiating characteristic. Antenna works at 14dBi gain what extends the range up to 4 times comparing to built-in or standard 1/4 wave antennas of wireless devices., 0.5 m H 155 / Nmale connector. Key features: - classic design in modern approach - very durable mounting - casing protects radiating elements from the wind, rain, snow and ice - high quality materials assure long-life operation - various cable length and connector type versions available Recommended as: - subscriber antenna with a range up to 1500* meters *average range to 9dBi base station, e.g. HORIZON midi 2.4GHz/9dBi - point to point links for up to 2500* meters range *two BabuYAGA 2.4GHz/14dBi antennas Electrical: Gain......................................14 dBi Frequency......

PANEL 14 is a directional, subscriber antenna working well with all 2.4GHz wireless devices. It can be used in indoor and outdoor applications. Antenna's radiator is a precise designed printed circuit board element. Module design assures perfect fitting what guarantee reliable performance in all weather conditions and constant high production quality. Antenna works at 14dBi gain what extends the range up to 4 times comparing to built-in or standard 1/4 wave antennas of wireless devices, Nfemale connector. Key features: - durable mounting with tilting option - ABS casing protects radiating elements from the wind, rain, snow and ice - very thin and discreet - thickness: 20mm Recommended as: - subscriber antenna with a range up to 1500* meters *average range to 9dBi base station, e.g. HORIZON midi 2.4GHz/9dBi - point to point links for up to 2500* meters range *two PANEL 14 2.4GHz/14dBi antennas small hotspot antenna, also with sectorized coverage Electrical: Gain........................

Extend the range of your wireless network, or connect to other wireless networks in your neighborhood. Just connect the antenna to your wireless router, access point or network card, then point and shoot. (See below for list of compatible wireless devices.) Package includes: 12 dBi Super Cantenna Booster Antenna Integrated 36-inch RF cable with RPSMA connector RPTNC adapter Dual tripod/pistol grip Features: Works with most wireless devices Directional 2.4 Ghz Wireless Network Booster Antenna Compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks Use it with your wireless router, access point, or client card Universal mounting socket: fits standard camera tripods or other mounting hardware such as outdoor speaker mounts. Weather-resistant coating - new black color

The TurboTenna discussed below appears to be a copy of a more or less identical product from Cantenna. Following on from my last posting a friend just pointed out the TurboTenna, a simple and nicely engineered antenna on a tripod with a 12+ dBi gain for only $19.95! The vendor, danets (otherwise known as DataCom Network Ltd.), also provides a useful though brief primer on antennas. If you get one of these TurboTennas let me know what you think of it.

Receive Sensitivity is how much signal a card needs to receive in order to work at that speed level. A 3 dB difference is double the power. You can now see some cards are getting much better distances. The difference between a Cisco 350 and a Addtron at 1 Mbps is 32x times the sensitivity. This means that the Cisco needs 1/32 as much signal strength as the Addtron does to work at the same rate. Also, a lower receive sensitivity number is better (IE: -95 is better than -80). Receive sensitivity is measured in dBm @BER 10E-5 or (or 8% FER). Note: IEEE 802.11 15.4.8.1 says that "F" in 8% FER for DSSS devices stands for an MPDU having 1024 octets. 8/100 (errors/frames) / (1024 (octets) * 8 (bits) = approx. 1/100,000 errors/bits = 10-5 BER. i.e. 8% FER should be comparable to 10-5 BER. CLICK

Enterprises can now deploy wireless LANs (WLAN) with the same confidence they do with wired networks, thanks to AirMagnet's suite of wireless network assurance solutions. With AirMagnet solutions you have complete control over the entire lifecycle of the wireless LAN (WLAN) from network design and deployment all the way to 24x7 intrusion prevention and troubleshooting. AirMagnet provides unrivaled visibility into all aspects of your wireless airspace with the intelligence to automatically diagnose, explain and respond to any wireless challenge 24x7 WLAN IDS/IPS and Management AirMagnet Enterprise 24/7 WLAN Security and Performance Monitoring Continuous monitoring and protection of all your wireless assets worldwide. AirMagnet Enterprise provides the most sophisticated WLAN solution to detect and defend against hundreds of wireless threats, trace and investigate devices, remotely troubleshoot performance problems and enforce and document compliance with internal and external polici...

Requirements: Windows Mobile device running Windows Mobile 2003SE, Windows Mobile 2005 or above with built-in WiFi. Overview: Are you tired of dragging your laptop all over campus to audit your WLAN? Simply slip Airscanner Mobile Sniffer into your pocket, and you are ready to go. Airscanner Mobile Sniffer packs the power of a full-scale sniffer into an application for portable devices. Sniff passwords from your Pocket PC As a network administrator, you want to protect your users' confidential data. What better way to do this than to stroll down the hall with Airscanner Mobile Sniffer hidden in your pocket? Thanks to our support for Ethereal packet capture format, grabbing your user's passwords out of the airwaves is as easy as watching a movie! Your users unintentionally send their passwords through the air in clear text, so it is better that you discover this first before a malicious drive-by hacker does it for you. Airscanner Mobile Sniffer also works in promiscuous mode, so ...

Nokia fans, S60 fans, Symbian fans of all types, your attention, please! Allow us to set your hearts a-flutter with a few pictures of Nokia's latest two all-business smartphones, the rumored E66 and E71. Both models are pictured here out and about, doing what they do best -- a promising indication that we might be due for an official announcement in the not-too-distant future. We're told that both have 3.2 megapixel cameras (as expected), 128MB of memory, and as we've suspected from the few photos we've seen before, they're "sleek and sexy" in the flesh. Nokia's manufacturing processes appear to be continuing to improve, too, because we're told that the E66 feels "rugged and solid" despite the slide mechanism -- a sore spot with many an N95 owner.

One of Nokia's upcoming business-class handsets, the svelte E66 slider, has garnered FCC approval ahead of a launch that we've got to believe is happening in the very near future now. That's the good news; the bad news is that there's zero North American 3G involved from what we can see in the test reports. That would make this one a tough sell for existing E65 customers in the States, we think, especially considering that prerelease units haven't been seen sporting Feature Pack 2. Ah well -- the E67, perhaps, Nokia? Turns out there's another E66 lurking in the FCC's midst that trades HSDPA 2100 for 850 / 1900

USB device http://dplanet.biz/alfa.com/product_info.php?cPath=159_177&products_id=403 Standards IEEE 802.11n draft, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g Receiver Sensitivity 11Mbps -90dBm / 54Mbps -78dBm / 300Mbps -70dBm Output power 16 – 18 dbm (typical) Range Coverage Indoor 30~50meters This is a pretty cheap toy, about 40 euro shipping included for EU. It's not fully supported on linux yet, but as you can see from the rt2x00 Project, the aim is to have also packet injection working from a vanilla kernel. Range coverage most likely is while using 802.11n.

SR71 USB 802.11a/b/g/n MIMO USB module External Antenna Connectors Atheros AR9160 with DFS SUPPORT IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n USB 2.0 5VDC (2) MMCX for 2x2 MIMO Operation -20C to +70C (extended temp version up to +95C) 802.11i with AES-CCM & TKIP Encryption, 802.1x, 64/128/152bit WEP up to 300Mbps 20MHz / 40MHz YES 2412-2462MHz(FCC) , 5475-5725MHz (CE), 5745-5825MHz (FCC) 24dBm, +/-2dB 1.25A, +/-100mA YES over 150m over 50km Linux Perfect for Aircrack-ng

The world's top handset maker Nokia Oyj expects the role of the Linux operating system in its product portfolio to increase as the role of its Internet-focused devices grows, company officials said. Linux has so far had little success on cellphones, but its role is increasing as more new Linux-based models reach the market, while Google Inc gave it a vote of confidence by using it to build its Android platform on. Nokia itself has used Linux for years in its Internet tablets, large phone-like devices used to access Internet on the go, but lacking calling functionality. "We will expand that range, and we believe that the role of Linux will grow," said Nokia spokesman Kari Tuutti. Linux is the most popular type of open source operating system which is available to the public to be used, revised and shared -- meaning it has a large developer community which could result in more attractive programs and lower costs for the likes of Nokia. Nokia has used the tablets to target t...

You're likely to get some bad wireless security advice from the guy at your local electronics superstore who sold you your router, because many of the commonly recommended wireless security tips floating around out there aren't actually all that useful and may even do more harm than good by lulling the end-user into a false sense of security. Hiding the SSID The SSID (Service Set Identifier) is an identification code (typically a simple name) broadcast by a wireless router. If a wireless device detects multiple SSIDs from multiple access points (APs), it will typically ask the end-user which one it should connect to. Telling a router not to broadcast its SSID may prevent basic wireless access software from displaying the network in question as a connection option, but it does nothing to actually secure the network. Any time a user connects to a router, the SSID is broadcast in plaintext, regardless of whether or not encryption is enabled. SSID information can also be picked up ...

Actually enabling a security standard (assuming you don't already run one) is simple. I'll provide a few sample screenshots from a Linksys WRT150 router (802.11n Draft 2.0 compliant); the procedure should be similar on any other product. Drop into the "Wireless Security" of the WRT150 and open the selection tab, and this is what you see: We're going to ignore WEP, since you really shouldn't be using it, and focus on the various WPA options. WPA Personal (aka, WPA-PSK) and WPA2-Personal are configured more-or-less identically. Select the option, choose your encryption method (TKIP or AES), and enter your chosen encryption key. There should be no need to change the default key renewal time (3,600 seconds) but if you need to do so, you can do that, as well. From this point, all you need to do is configure your various wireless adapters with the same information, and you should be up and running. Linksys' options for switching to RADIUS mode are a bit misl...

WPA was developed in response to the flaws in WEP, and it's a much better security protocol than its predecessor. Unlike WEP, WPA uses a 48-bit initialization vector and a 128-bit encryption key. More importantly, however, WPA uses what's called the Temporary Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). Whereas WEP recycles the same key for encrypting all the packets flowing across the network, WPA's TKIP changes the encryption key every single time a packet is transmitted. This, combined with the use of longer keys, prevents a hacker from compromising a router simply by passively observing a large enough set of packet transmissions. The WPA2 standard is a 2004 update to the WPA specification that includes support for a US government-approved encryption protocol called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). (AES can also now be used with WPA, though the presence of this option will probably depend on how recently your router received a firmware update.) Unlike WPA, WPA2 was not explicitly d...

Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) was the first wireless security protocol. Originally, WEP used a 40-bit encryption key, but this was later extended to 104 bits due to concerns over the security of the WEP standard. This change, however, was little more than a stop-gap measure, meant to make WEP less susceptible to brute-force attacks. WEP used a 24-bit initialization vector (IV) when encrypting both 40-bit and 104-bit ciphers. This 24-bit IV is vulnerable to cracking due to the low number of possible permutations (16,777,216 for those of you keeping count). Just last year, researchers succeeded in cracking 104-bit WEP encryption in about two minutes using an old Pentium-M machine. Unfortunately, WEP's flaws have yet to drive it from the market. As recently as last November, surveys showed that up to 25 percent of WAP hotspots were still using WEP, and the largest data theft in US history is thought to have been caused by the use of WEP encryption. Now that even WEP's 104-bit enc...

Tech site Ars Technica runs down the basics of securing your home wireless network with the most secure and up-to-date methods. The main takeaway is that when you enable encryption on your wireless router, use WPA encryption instead of WEP, because it's better and stronger. Unlike WEP, WPA uses a 48-bit initialization vector and a 128-bit encryption key. More importantly, however, WPA uses what's called the Temporary Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). Whereas WEP recycles the same key for encrypting all the packets flowing across the network, WPA's TKIP changes the encryption key every single time a packet is transmitted. This, combined with the use of longer keys, prevents a hacker from compromising a router simply by passively observing a large enough set of packet transmissions. Ars lists common home network hardware—from an Xbox 360 to a Wii to an iPhone—and the various protocols they support. Luckily, most do speak WPA. Here's our full guide to setting up a home wirele...

The Web Worker Daily weblog suggests several methods to keep your router performing and your wireless internet strong. The post offers several tips for how to improve your wireless network, from performing a cycled reboot when things aren't working correctly to adding access points to boost your signal to every corner of your home. Honestly, after having turned my router into a super-router with both DD-WRT and Tomato, I've never enjoyed more stability and performance from a router. I can't remember the last time I had to do a cycled reboot, and the Wi-Fi signal boosting doesn't hurt, either. Routers running Tomato/DD-WRT also work as wireless bridges for extending your base signal, and they're a cheap way to do it. Let's hear how you keep your home network churning day in and out in the comments. Regular Checkups to Keep Your Wi-Fi Signal Spiffy [Web Worker Daily]

The Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder webapp displays free wireless internet hotspots in your area on a Google Maps mashup. To use it, just give it your address, city, or zip and it'll display many of the nearby hotspots. This sort of tool isn't new by any means, but it is returning better results in my area than previously mentioned webapps like Hotspotr. If you give it a try, let's hear how the hotspot finder measures up in your area in the comments. While you're there, you may want to download wiPod, which stores all that hotspot information in note form for easy browsing on your iPod. Free Wi-Fi/Hotspot Finder [AnchorFree via FreewareGenius]

Turn your Windows Mobile phone into a Wi-Fi router, providing any Wi-Fi-capable device access to your cell plan's data network, with freeware application WMWifiRouter. Install WMWifiRouter to your phone, run the application, and it automatically sets up an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network named WMWifiRouter that you can connect your laptop—or any other wireless device—to without going through the regular pain involved in tethering an internet connection to your mobile device. My WM phone is out of the house today so I couldn't try it out, so if you do let us know how it worked in the comments. The brilliant WMWifiRouter is freeware, still under heavy development, Windows Mobile 6 only. WMWifiRouter [via Hackszine]

SmallBusiness.com has got a long wiki list of airports that offer free wifi access in the US. 39 states are represented here, from Alabama to Wisconsin.

Windows only: By default Windows hides WEP and WPA keys stored on your PC to connect to various Wi-Fi networks, but freeware utility WirelessKeyView lists them for you. When you've forgotten that Wi-Fi network key, run WirelessKeyView to see all the networks your Windows PC has ever connected to using its default Wireless Zero Configuration mechanism. (This utility doesn't reveal keys stored by third-party network connection software.) Delete keys from old networks that you no longer need, and easily copy keys to the clipboard to send or save. WirelessKeyView is a free download for Windows XP and Vista.