The Hunt for Rogue WLANs

Joseph Magee used to be a CIO's most irksome problem: an MIS guy whobrought WLAN equipment into the office just to play with. "Little does[that person] know that that signal sitting right there on his deskcan easily be sniffed," says Magee, referring to the process ofmonitoring the airwaves for WLAN traffic.

"I was that guy once," admits Magee, a former chief security officerat an online brokerage who is now CSO at Top Layer Networks, a networksecurity company in Westboro, Mass. "I looked at what I plugged intoon my screen, and a big financial corporation's name popped up on mylaptop, and I looked across the street and saw their building. Itfreaked me out."

The tools that hackers or curious interlopers use to look for WLANtraffic can help with defense as well. By using tools such asNetStumbler, a Windows utility, or IBMIBM's Wireless SecuritySecurity Auditor,CIOs can find out whether there are any rogue wireless LANs at theoffice. Alles zu IBM auf CIO.de Alles zu Security auf CIO.de