Wired networks in a wireless world Options

[booklord]

So let's see if I got this right.

The matrix crashes.

A new wireless one is constructed in its place.

The otaku increase in number and evolve into Technomancers and show the ability to access this matrix through some sort of matrix telepathy.

Is it just me or would this cause a major rush by the corporations to go back to wired networks for their facilties? For security reasons?

Likewise for cyberware ( if rumors that technomancers can effect it as well are true ) Obviously corporations would take a strong look at giving their forces old-style cyberware that wasn't subject to any technomancer manipulation.

[blakkie]

[mfb]

i don't think it'd cause any larger rush than the prevalence of hackers in general. that said, any corp infosec officer who doesn't make his high-end research lab a wired system, or at least a wireless system contained by Faraday cage, is an idiot.

and, really, in 2070, a wired system isn't necessarily going to be much more secure than a wireless system, unless you monitor the wired system very closely. all that has to happen is for some researcher to plug in his mp3 keychain player into your ultra-secure wired system, and all of the sudden, your ultra-secure wired system has grown a wireless access point.

[booklord]

Faraday cage?

In any event its basic security. Any security sub-system would only be accessible for secure jackpoints. Any secure research system would obviously have several security safeguards to prevent someone from making it accessible to the matrix.

For ultra-secure locations, I'd expect that a corp would not only use an isolated wired network, but would have jammers in place to prevent anyone from accessing the wireless network while inside the facility.

[Kagetenshi]

Faraday cages block EMR.

~J

[Backgammon]

If I recall correctly my electricity course, all you need to do to build a Farraday cage is to "box" in the area with metal poles. The EMR shoots out, but makes a "force field" between the poles.

In any case, it's very very easy to do. Your computer case, for example, is a Farraday cage. You may google for more details.

[hahnsoo]

The SR4 solution is simpler... Wireless-blocking Paint. Yeah, Lead Paint. Great.

[mfb]

feed it to your kids!

[Wireknight]

It's not lead paint, and it's real, a paint containing aluminum and copper sold by an outfit called Force Field Wireless. However, it dulls (rather than stopping cold) radio frequencies, and does so for all of them, not just those that specifically carry data. I'm not familiar enough with metallurgy or optics to understand how hard it would be, with future advancements in material engineering, to create materials that inhibit only certain data-carrying wavelengths. Without that feature, it's more of a drawback than it is a boon.

[hahnsoo]

[Wireknight]

Heh, as a fly on the wall for the technomancer discussion, the higher-ups essentially declared it to be so, and then told the writers to figure out why and how.

[Smed]

[Nyxll]

It is actually more efficient to wrap the outside of your house in tin foil, (note not aluminum) than to use any of these paints. Remember to use copper screens on your windows. The width of the holes must be less than the wavelength you are trying to block. I am actually looking at ways to make my house into a faraday cage.

The problem with wireless is that what can be encoded can be decoded. You are vulnerable to man in the middle attacks. This will not improve in the future. As encryption gets more sophisticated so does decryption. It only takes listening to 5 or so million packets to figure out your encryption key with wep. Wireless transmissions will never be secure as long someone can eavesdrop. If you have a point to point beam, where no one can listen in ... then it could be secure, but if someone else can listen to your signal, you are going to get hacked, or duped.

A wired system IS going to be more secure, as you need to gain physical access to the network. Wireless waves do not just stop midair. With a wired system you can also trace data packets to find out where someone accessed. Much easier than trying to locate someone around a broadcast node.

[Kagetenshi]

[Nyxll]

[Kagetenshi]

Wireless encryption breaks my "provided the people designing encryption aren't idiotic" requirement.

Take GPG. Introduced in '99, one minor weakness discovered since then. Or we could go with something that's already been broken, like SHA-1 hashing (I know it's redundant, but someone might not know what it is): published in 1995, broken February of this year. Even then, it isn't trivial—they reduced the number of operations required to find a collision from 2^80 to 2^69.

Edit: this has apparently been reduced to 2^63 within the past week.

As for why wireless is still vulnerable, I honestly don't know this one but my guess is that security is sacrificed for inexpensive hardware and ease-of-use. Man-in-the-middle attacks of the information-falsifying variety are solvable with public-key cryptography and encryption strong enough to defy cryptanalysis.

~J

[Nyxll]

[Kagetenshi]

[Ellery]

I'm pretty sure you can do good encryption with computational costs that scale somewhere between (key length) and (key length)^2; decryption for an authorized user takes a similar amount of time. However, to break good encryption by brute force, the costs scale as 2^(key length).

With even a moderately fast computer, it doesn't make sense to use keys less than 512 bits in length. The SHA-1 style attack might reduce the search space from 2^512 to 2^400 or something--still something that would require the computational power of the universe to crack by trial and error.

[nezumi]

[Nyxll]

Tinfoil is much more effective at blocking EMR than aluminum. Aluminum tends to get penetrated too easily. If I could pull off the brick and had 15K around I would also consider galvanized steel.

[booklord]

How about just plain jamming the wireless signal?

Runners are detected in a secure facility. The security office decides their system has been compromised and hits a switch which sends a jamming signal throughout the complex. Suddenly all wireless matrix activity becomes so much static and access to the system is only accessible to those who can physically jack in.

Any reason that wouldn't work in SR4?

( Let's assume that the facility holds the data from MCT testing their latest pharmacudical by using black op teams to spike the city water of Portland, Tir Tairngire. In other words something that would warrant ultra-extreme security measures )

[Kagetenshi]

Jamming prevents your own communications as well. It's a good emergency response, but not something you're going to want to use for prevention.

~J

[hobgoblin]

that kind of thinking is similar to wondering why hosts dont have a physical kill switch on their connection. to much attacks and you just pull the plug on the outside connection...

[booklord]