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4.2 Ethics and Legalities of Open Networks

Open networks are still a gray area in both law and ethics, as no laws have been enacted that control how they should and should not be used. There are any number of opinions as to their legality and ethicality, so you'll have to decide for yourself.

Opening your network

Whether it's legal to open your network to the public, or even to selected friends , depends entirely upon your ISP user agreement. Unfortunately, not every ISP has been clear about sharing access ( especially with older agreements), but you can almost always find something on their web site describing usage policy. While some ISPs explicitly allow you to share the wealth, others explicitly ban it. If you're with one of the latter, you'll need to weigh the benefits of opening your network against the chances of being caught.

In any event, if you do choose to make your network open to others, consider giving your network a name that makes your intentions clear. For example, you could name your network something like "Public HomeNet," or "Use My Bandwidth, Please." You can also set up a Mac with a web server on your local network that is Rendezvous-enabled, so that visitors using Safari can easily find it. On that local site, you can include information about your wireless network, and a bit about you. See Chapter 8 for more information about using web sharing as a billboard for your WLAN.

Using open networks

You're on the road, need access to the Internet, and find an open network where someone hasn't enabled encryption! What do you do?

This is an area on the edges of the legal frontier, and many people disagree about what's proper when it comes to using open (but not explicitly shared) networks. The arguments for and against piggybacking on someone's AP usually come down to analogies : is borrowing bandwidth like listening along with your neighbor while they have their radio on, or is it more like breaking into their apartment while they're out and making copies of their CDs?

Two examples from the front lines:

The World Wide War Drive group (http://www.worldwidewardrive.org/) organizes an irregular national search for unsecured APs, with the goal of teaching owners how to secure their wireless networks. Their page on ethics specifically requests that participants not connect to any of the open hotspots that they find.

On the other side, the legality FAQ at Warchalking.org argues that using open networks is both legal and moral (http://www.warchalking.org/story/2002/9/22/223831/236). After all, if the owner doesn't want their network to be used by the public, all they have to do is turn on WEP to make their intent clear.

The jury is still out on this one, and we aren't qualified to give legal advice ”you'll have to decide for yourself where you stand.

Chapter 5. Security

With no physical boundaries, can wireless networks be secure? Can they be locked down sufficiently to satisfy security-conscious users? Because of fundamental flaws in the initial wireless security standard, the answer is complicated. In this chapter, we explain the security issues inherent in the 802.11 family and the various ways you can secure a wireless network.

5.1 Secure Wireless Computing

Before we get into the gory details of Wi-Fi LAN security, let us make one thing clear: Wired Equivalent Privacy ( WEP ), the security protocol used by most 802.11 networks at the time of this writing, is fundamentally flawed. Though we talk about WEP in much more detail later in this chapter, here is a quick rundown of WEP's flaws:

All users in a wireless network share the same secret key, and a secret key is no longer a secret if more than one person knows it.
The implementation of WEP makes it very susceptible to attacks by hackers. It is not a matter of whether it can be cracked, but a matter of how soon. The flaws in WEP have been proven both in theory and practice.

Although WEP has its flaws, it's worth using to discourage unauthorized users from connecting to your access point. If you need stronger security, you'll have to rely on other techniques to provide it. In the first part of this chapter, we assume that you are connected to a wireless network (with or without WEP), and that you want to securely access the network (even for simple tasks such as surfing the Web or reading your email). There are three ways for you to improve the security of your wireless communications.

Virtual Private Networks ( VPN ): A VPN allows you to remotely access a private network as though you were connected to it physically. Moreover, the entire communication channel is protected by encryption. So if you are connected to a VPN server wirelessly , the packets transmitted between your computer and the VPN server (including the access point) are encrypted by the VPN connection, which is much more secure than using WEP. An added bonus is that most VPN solutions have stronger authentication than that available in WEP.
Secure Shell ( SSH ): SSH lets you initiate a shell session (similar to Telnet) or exchange files with a remote server, with all information exchanges encrypted. When not using a VPN, SSH is an excellent option for securely connecting to another computer.
Firewalls: If you connect to public networks where your fellow users are unknown and untrusted, a good firewall can provide some degree of security. Mac OS X includes basic firewall capabilities; there are third-party firewall applications available that have more features.

After this, we'll cover the details of Wi-Fi security and the various technologies that are in use (or have been proposed) for securing wireless networks.

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4.2 Ethics and Legalities of Open Networks