17. Wireless

We're looking to set up an office phone line using Asterisk at Home. The latest version has added a custom SugarCRM package, allowing you to have Sugar dial out for you. Very cool feature.

Meanwhile, I ran across this hardware hack to hook a regular telephone to your computer:
GRYNX � Build your own Chat-Cord.

I've used Mandrake Multi-Network Firewall (MNF) as a firewall for a couple of clients. Just yesterday I had to reinstall it when the hard drive of the firewall failed after a client moved their office.

In this chapter of the book, I wrote about Mesh Networking as being the cutting edge of wide area networks. At that writing, there were a couple of proprietary mesh networking systems in place, one consisting of wireless lamp-posts in the UK.

Now the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network has released an open source mesh networking distribution, that automatically configures nodes, routes traffic, and provides reliable networking without needing an Internet connection.

From the FAQ:

The service CU-Wireless nodes provide is like DSL or cable modem.

Wired magazine is running a story about "bluesnarfing," the practice of sniffing out your address book or calendar, making calls with your phone, and other more nefarious activity, hijacking your phone via Bluetooth. A must read. Wired 12.12: They've Got Your Number

Articles

• “Wireless lamp posts take over world!” by Guy Kewney
• Radio Spectrum Chart
• Bluetooth And Linux, by Marcel Holtman
• Linux wireless how-to

Software

• Linux WLAN-NG drivers

NewsForge has an interesting A peek at script kiddie culture. This story disputes many of the "security by obscurity" myths abounding in the closed source world--stating that the vulnerability exploited by the Blaster virus was known in script kiddie circles months before Microsoft claimed to discover the problem.

Serious flaws in bluetooth security lead to disclosure of personal data. Bluetooth turns out to have a number of security flaws that allow people within range to access your private data, including calendar events and contacts.

This article talks about a group that has released a way of hacking a cable modem that allows the hacker to listen to pretty much all of the traffic in the neighborhood.

Techniques like this prove you can never be sure who's listening to your network traffic. Any sensitive web browsing or email you use should be encrypted, to prevent snooping like this.