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The author seems to be making the assumption that the "target" is an unencrypted network. They provide no information on wireless network security and its effects on the attack and the conditions that need to be met for someone to be able and perform it.

Protected networks require more effort depending on the method used, WEP is utterly broken, WPA/WPA2 can be broken but require considerably more effort and processing power. More concrete methods exists (802.1x) but are almost never used outside enterprise or educational facilities.

Finally, the chances that reversing an ip address will result in a correct hostname is most likely never the case.

The author is either very ill informed on how wireless networks actually work or is trying to make people scared without explaining why these things happen and how they can protect themselves - any of which I really do not like.



Encryption of wireless isn't really a barrier, it can be easily broken. As its very rare to not have a shared key, once you've joined the "encrypted" network you can see all the traffic flowing through it.

WEP stands for wireless equivalent privacy, and it is. its trivial to break. (just like monitoring wired connections)


> WPA/WPA2 can be broken but require considerably more effort and processing power.

Can to elaborate? Aside from brute force attacks, my understanding is that WPA2-PSK using AES is secure.


There are many unencrypted networks around: hotels, cafes, hotspots at airports and train stations, inside trains and planes and even cities start to provide their own wireless networks. And I expect less than 10% of the regular users to use VPNs or to keep track of only using HTTPS (or secure connections on other protocols).


Also keep in mind a lot of people have their phones/laptops set to join any available wireless networks without asking them, making a spoofing attack a lot more easier.




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