The Captive Portal

Presented at DEF CON 9 (2001), July 14, 2001, 11 a.m. (50 minutes)

Adam and I have been doing research on wireless security from a practical perspective. Basically discovering what's wrong with the current security models in 802.11 networking and how they can be fixed or worked around.

Adam has developed a system called the Captive Portal that will allow wireless networks to be setup that are resilent to problems with link-level authentication and encryption schemes. The system is still in development, but will be "released" by conference time (as much as open source software gets released ;). In the coming months we will be writing a paper on the Captive Portal; how it works, what it's strenghts and weaknesses are, and instructions on getting one going.

I will give the first part of the talk, Adam will give the second part the part that deals directly with the Captive Portal.

We will also setup a wireless network at DC so folks can try and hack the portal. We're always looking for ways to improve our idea.


Presenters:

  • Bruce Potter / @gdead as Bruce Potter
    Bruce Potter is the founder of The Shmoo Group, an organization of security, crypto and privacy professionals. He has done work as a network engineer, software security consultant, CTO of a failed startup, and a wire monkey. Bruce posts daily security news to Securitygeeks.com.
  • Adam
    In 1993 Adam started the first ISP in his home town of Dunedin New Zealand. Since then he has worked for several ISP's, small and large, in various capacities, mostly as a UNIX systems administrator. His current project is Personal Telco which is trying to leverage consumer grade 802.11b gear to build internet accessible neighborhood communities.

Links:

Similar Presentations: