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A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

blog.ksplice.com

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Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#21

Post by drewcrawford »

eob wrote: post #4
unwind wrote: post #2

I would have thought that a place like MIT ran their on-campus wireless using encryption, which should make this kind of sniffing/snooping a bit more difficult. Even our home wlan is encrypted. Weird. Is this by design?

As far as I know, yes, it is by design. MIT's philosophy toward just about everything is famously open. - You can walk around in just about all of the buildings during the day, and many even at night without a special access card. - A CS professor here was the one who founded OpenCourseWare, which helped ignite the fire that led to many universities putting their courseware up for free online) - Course registration i…

> In terms of internet access, this culture means that anyone within radio-range of MIT's campus gets free, unprotected WiFi.

My university requires you to register MAC addresses, change your hostname, turn on SAMBA, and use PEAP authentication before they will let you connect to their packetshaped and heavily filtered network where you can download a full gigabyte per day. :`-(

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#22

Post by alextgordon »

kinghajj wrote: post #19
epochwolf wrote: post #5

I've done some of my own wireless sniffing on campus. I didn't actually realize it's a federal crime to do so. Oops.

What's the difference between taking a picture in a public place (a.k.a. measuring the photons of the wavelength of visible light) and sniffing Wi-Fi signals (a.k.a. measuring the photons of the wavelength of radio)? Public photons are public photons, it seems arbitrary to distinguish them based on wavelength. How can it be a crime to measure the photons passing all around us, sometimes literally through us? The orig…

The difference is humans can see the visual spectrum but not the radio spectrum. This means that people tend to ensure their own privacy in the visual spectrum (by wearing clothes, etc), but don't in the radio spectrum (by transferring sensitive data unencrypted).

You could argue that people are being irresponsible by not paying more attention to their "radio privacy" (and you'd be right), however the lawmakers apparently felt that the advantages of making it illegal outweighed the disadvantages.

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#23

Post by jrockway »

jodrellblank wrote: post #17
epochwolf wrote: post #5

I've done some of my own wireless sniffing on campus. I didn't actually realize it's a federal crime to do so. Oops.

Given that realisation, I'd have thought not admitting in public to having comitted a federal crime would jump higher up your priorities!

Good luck making a case with no evidence and no witnesses.

Also, how is listening to a Wifi radio any different than listening to your police scanner or AM/FM radio? I'm not convinced that passive packet capture is a criminal activity.

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#24

Post by kevindication »

daten wrote: post #16
phreanix wrote: post #8

Somewhat funny quote: "Alas, pretty boring."

I thought it sums up the article pretty well. I was expecting much more based on the title. A better title: "Amateur high-level wireless traffic analysis of 21 consenting students during a 45 minute class"

You could have rewritten this article without the word wireless. It's only relevant because he didn't have to deal with a switched network.

No wireless packet analysis at all? Weak.

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#25

Post by jodrellblank »

jrockway wrote: post #23
jodrellblank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that realisation, I'd have thought not admitting in public to having comitted a federal crime would jump higher up your priorities!

Good luck making a case with no evidence and no witnesses. Also, how is listening to a Wifi radio any different than listening to your police scanner or AM/FM radio? I'm not convinced that passive packet capture is a criminal activity.

Why is you putting a knife in someone considered attempted murder in one case and assault in another and an accident in a third?

Why is computing an algorithm that undoes DRM illegal and one which predicts weather not?

Why is building something electronic and selling it legal, unless there's a bit of paper in an appropriate office somewhere in the country describing what you've built?

We don't legislate things based only on the precise actions of what people are doing, but also the social and mental contexts in which people do them. And listening to an FM radio station is a different act in a different context to listening to a police radio station or a privately owned laptop's WiFi card.

I'm not saying I know it is a criminal activity, just that it's not as simple as saying "well it's like listening to public FM radio so it must be legal.". It isn't like it, and that conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#26

Post by zwieback »

kevindication wrote: post #24
daten wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it sums up the article pretty well. I was expecting much more based on the title. A better title: "Amateur high-level wireless traffic analysis of 21 consenting students during a 45 minute class"

You could have rewritten this article without the word wireless. It's only relevant because he didn't have to deal with a switched network. No wireless packet analysis at all? Weak.

she

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#27

Post by jrockway »

jodrellblank wrote: post #25
jrockway wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck making a case with no evidence and no witnesses. Also, how is listening to a Wifi radio any different than listening to your police scanner or AM/FM radio? I'm not convinced that passive packet capture is a criminal activity.

Why is you putting a knife in someone considered attempted murder in one case and assault in another and an accident in a third? Why is computing an algorithm that undoes DRM illegal and one which predicts weather not? Why is building something electronic and selling it legal, unless there's a bit of paper in an appropriate office somewhere in the country describing what you've built? We don't legislate things based…

Why is you putting a knife in someone considered attempted murder in one case and assault in another and an accident in a third?

This would be a good analogy if knives were being constantly broadcast into my head.

Also, since it's impossible to prove that you listened to a radio transmission, I don't see how any law against listening to public Wifi would be enforceable.

(Example: saying "I've smoked pot" on the Internet. I just confessed to a crime, but probably won't be spending much time in prison for it. A confession is not enough proof.)

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#28

Post by epochwolf »

jodrellblank wrote: post #17
epochwolf wrote: post #5

I've done some of my own wireless sniffing on campus. I didn't actually realize it's a federal crime to do so. Oops.

Given that realisation, I'd have thought not admitting in public to having comitted a federal crime would jump higher up your priorities!

I worry more about the local police.

I was investigated for threatening to burn down the campus a couple of years ago. Supposedly I talked about it to someone on campus over the summer. I wasn't enrolled for summer classes and I hadn't been near the campus for 5 weeks when I was reported to have been there.

I can't count the number of times I've had my laptop banned from the school network because I plugged into a mis-labeled ethernet jack. I'm on some list with the system administrators. I've filed more bug reports than anyone else. On top of this I use an encrypted vpn to prevent them from eavesdropping on my traffic.

If the FBI wants to investigate me for my comments on this site, they are welcome to it.

Re: A look at the wireless traffic of MIT students

#29

Post by JoeAltmaier »

lazyant wrote: post #10

30% of DNS traffic? isn't this a lot?

I wondered about that too. Not the case on my wired network. Perhaps its because many laptops were taken out of suspend and then hardly used, so session-initialization messages dominate. btw Thanks for actually addressing the point of the article.
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