Adhoc questions.

[ChrisB]

I'm going to be configuring a group of 4 laptops that need to share data with eachother while on the road.
The systems are IBM Thinkpad T30's with a builtin "IBM High rate Wireless LAN Mini PC" nic.

From my understanding, ADhoc mode seems like the appropriate choice, but I have security concerns.

First, does Adhoc still have the same security issues as when using an Access Point?

And what is the recommended setup?
I've configured 128-bit Wep with a key generated through a Passphrase.
There's a network name option available: Does this provide any security? Is this easily sniffed from the air?
I don't see anywhere to turn off SSID broadcasting (does Adhoc mode use SSIDs)?
And lastly, I'm going to implement static ip addressing.

From my understanding, the above will prevent someone with a wireless connection from easily connecting to my wlan. ...unless they use some sort of sniffing utility.

Are there any other recommendations for securing Adhoc mode? do I need to make any changes to my current configuration?

Thanks in advance.
chris

[JoeTampa]

Chris,

The same WEP vulnerabilities exist wether you are in ad-hoc or infrastructure mode. There is no such concept as disabling broadcast SSID in ad-hoc mode, this is a feature added to AP's only at this time.


The only security for ad-hoc networks would be some encryption client that does not allow cleartext communication. Your choices would be the AirFortress Client or any IPsec client that both allows peer to peer communications and also allows you to disable split tunneling.


- Joe