coverup Posted July 29, 2004 Report Share Posted July 29, 2004 I am yet to rollout a wireless LAN at home, and as a first step, I have installed the driverloader from Linuxant. The laptop has now two interfaces: integrated ethernet, eth0 - has a static IP address and connects to the wired hardware router on 192.168.0.1; wireless centrino card, eth1 -is supposed to get an IP address from a DHCP server, but usually fails to boot, as there is no access point around to connect to - till recently! One of my neighbours setup a wireless network last week. He has no idea about the network security, sand his access point broadcasts its ESSID and offers IP addresses to everyone around. It's certainly none of my business, except for the fact that the signal sometimes is strong enough for my laptop to get an IP address from that AP. Even better, that network uses the same private subnet, and his AP and my router have the same IP adresses. Eventually, I end up with having both eth0 and eth1 connected to 192.168.0.1 though this IP address physically corresponds to two different devices located at different housholds. What can I do about this? Certainly, I can turn off wireless for time being. But I would like to use it eventually, so that can't be a permanent solution. I am also reluctant to change my subnet from 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.1.0 since quite a few settings will have to be changed (eg, samba server runs on this laptop). Any suggestions please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted July 29, 2004 Report Share Posted July 29, 2004 Very quick thought... Change the Gateway IP on your router? Why are you reluctant to change the subnet, and shouldn't that be something like 255.255.255.0? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted July 30, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 30, 2004 Very quick thought... Change the Gateway IP on your router? Why are you reluctant to change the subnet, and shouldn't that be something like 255.255.255.0? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think, 255.255.255.0 is the netmask. Frankly, I don't know what it does... Changing the subnet would mean that I will have to change all of the settings on the router and on the computers on the LAN. Not a big deal, but a bit of nuissance... Besides, that will not prevent eth1 from getting the IP address from the hostile network and receiving packets from them. Ideally, it would be nice to have a preview of the list of available networks and allow the connection to trusted ones using a GUI. Also, I would like to do authentication using a MAC address. WiFi routers can do this sort of things, so clients should be able to do this as well I suppose. As my example shows, the IP address authentication is not enough. Are firewalls capable of doing MAC authentication? Finally, the laptop is XP/Mandrake dual boot, that's another headache... What could be a right solution for XP? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 30, 2004 Report Share Posted July 30, 2004 walk over to your neighbors house, knock on his door, tell him what's up, and offer to secure his network as best you can. that's the best possible answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Windependent Posted July 30, 2004 Report Share Posted July 30, 2004 walk over to your neighbors house, knock on his door, tell him what's up, and offer to secure his network as best you can. that's the best possible answer. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> that's the best approach i could think of. i would try to enable MAC filtering on both networks so that they only respond to the MAC addresses on the cards that are in PCs that belong on the same network. i would also enable encryption on both networks so that somebody doesn't eavesdrop on data as it flies through the air. looking at this from another perspective, if both of you have broadband connections, maybe the two of you can work out a deal. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ac_dispatcher Posted July 30, 2004 Report Share Posted July 30, 2004 (edited) Does here share a printer on the net? If so load it up and type a nice letter about security and hit print to his printer. Nothing like freaking people out (with no real harm) to get them to lock up there $hit Added It's certainly none of my business, except for the fact that the signal sometimes is strong enough for my laptop to get an IP address from that AP. Yes it is or you would not be here with the problem. Its sad but other people security its now everyones problem. If he becomes a "zombie" then he can be a host for a DDOS attack. Does that affect you? Edited July 30, 2004 by ac_dispatcher Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Windependent Posted July 30, 2004 Report Share Posted July 30, 2004 Does here share a printer on the net? If so load it up and type a nice letter about security and hit print to his printer. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That would be a cute way to get the message across! So that you're being a nice guy about it, I'd try sending a report to his printer and then knock on his door as soon as you've done it. As Tyme suggested, its always best to take the high road in situations like this -- but the added impact that's provided by a surprise at the printer could be just the leverage that you need to help to make your point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted July 30, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 30, 2004 Thanks to everybody replied. In conclusion, technology is helpless against someone's stupidity. I will make an attempt to talk to the guy. Meanwhile, I have unloaded the driverloader from /etc/modules.conf and turned off the card in Windows untill I decide to setup a wireless LAN. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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