This all sounds fine and reasonable to me. The SSID you are describing is
a pretty common one that you will run into all over -- at work, the
airport, coffee shop, etc. it definitely sounds like a wireless that is
configured with ad-hoc mode turned on and is most likely broadcasting out
without the owner's knowledge. It might not be a laptop though. It could
just as easily be a PDA or phone of some sort. You might want to take the
MAC address you got and check it here:
http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml
See what it comes back with. If it returns that it's a company that only
makes PDAs, then you have at least narrowed down the device. You should
be able to track down the device by the signal strength though. I've
tracked down many machines in ad-hoc mode with AirMagnet in the past. The
signal will get into the 90's and perhaps reach 100 when it's within a few
feet. It is most likely a misconfigured device. It's not unheard of, but
pretty rare for an ad-hoc device to actually be there for malicious
intent. It's much more likely someone would target this device for
network access (think ethernet cable plugged in but wireless still on) or
access to the machine itself.
Steven
securityzone.org
This scenario occurred this morning- any suggestions or insights are
appreciated, as are any comments as to my handling of this.
I'm a Security Specialist for a medium sized company. I have only
been working in security for 2 months. There are no other
Security Specialists here. I report to our Manager of Information
Security, who is out of town on business. I work in a 6 floor office
building which we own completely. We lease the second floor to a computer
training center. We do not permit our employees to use any wireless
networks, and we do not have any access points. Ad hoc connection is
prevented through group policy. All of our laptops are XP SP2. Up until
today, I have never seen an available wireless network here.
Periodically I check to make sure that no one has installed an
unauthorized WAP. This morning I fired up NetStumbler and found that a
network named "Free Public WiFi" was not only available, but available at
full strength. This was listed as a peer to peer network, so I assumed
that the network was actually being broadcast from another wireless device
(laptop). This network was listed as being wide open with no required key
and no encryption. The originating point definitely appears to be coming
from within my building, but I haven't been able to determine exactly
where.
I immediatley checked the MAC address of the wireless SSID to make sure
that it didn't belong to one of my company assets. It did not.
I then connected to the network with my laptop. I was not assigned an IP
address, rather Windows gave me one of the default 169.254 APIPA
addresses. I then
sniffed packets for over an hour. I felt justified in doing this, to make
sure that none of my companies equipment was connecting to this network.
I found no network activity whatsoever.
Finally, I ran a ping sweep against the 169.254.x.x subnet to make sure
that none of my companies equipment were connected to this network. The
ping sweep returned only my laptop and one other device. I checked the
other device's MAC address in my inventory and verified that it too was
not our
equipment.
I then summarized all of my investigation and sent it to my boss in an
email. I suggested that this network does not appear to be malicious at
this time and offered to take more action pending his recommendation. I
believe that this network probably belongs to someone at the computer
training center on our second floor playing around.
Do you all feel that these were appropriate actions? The only other
possible action I considered regarding this would be to contact the
training center on the second floor and ask them about this. What do you
all think?
As always, your feedback is appreciated.
Thanks,
-Shawn
