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Duo Hack Laptop Through Wi-Fi Driver
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-06-22
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
In a presentation at the impending Black Hat USA 2006 conference, two security researchers will demonstrate how they managed to take over a laptop computer by exploiting poorly written code in the wireless device driver.
David Maynor, who works for Internet Security Systems, and Jon Ellch, who is attending the U.S. Naval postgraduate school in Monterey, California, were the ones to pull off the hack. Maynor described the ramifications of the act to TMC.net, saying, "This would be the digital equivalent of a drive-by shooting."
Maynor and Ellch used tools such as LORCON (described by Wikipedia as "a library for injecting 802.11 frames . . . without the need to change the application code") to discover the flaws and vulnerabilities of many different wireless device drivers. Some of these issues left potential targets wide open to attack.
Ellch explained some of the implications. "You don't have to necessarily be connected for these device driver flaws to come into play," he said. "Just because your wireless card is on and looking for a network could be enough."
Maynor further described the situation, saying that "wireless device drivers are like the Wild, Wild West right now." The TMC article cited an experiment in which researchers drove around in a "hacking lab on wheels," looking for "vulnerable Bluetooth wireless devices" in Milan. They came across over 1,400 devices fitting that description in about 23 hours.
Understand that this is not an act that I, my employer, or anyone else is recommending. It's just an interesting technical accomplishment. Hopefully the "good guys" will now go on to fix the vulnerabilities.
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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