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Comment by FartyMcFarter | Hacker News Reader

Did I read the article correctly in that it is possible to disrupt WiFi networks to make devices disconnect from it, without breaking its encryption? Wow.

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So easily that a tamagotchi style game has been made of it and other wifi attacks https://pwnagotchi.ai/

hadn't seen this one yet and just got a zero, thanks for posting this

Not only that，you don't have to be in close range when attacking, weak signal that won't get you connected or even shown up in the list is enough to make it work, you can stay even farther if you have high gain antennas, as this attack doesn't require your response packets to work, you just have to send the target AP one-way fake frames.

Regardless of any encryption, wireless can always be disrupted via jamming. Even if management frames were encrypted you can still disconnect devices by jamming the signal.

The power requirements for jamming are much higher. Making it much easier to detect a jammer, and harder to run one. Also quite a bit more illegal.

Besides, jamming has a much less targeted effect than a de-auth.

When talking about home security I doubt the attacker cares much about legality, and detection requires specialised equipment, by the time it is brought in the robbery has already been committed and the attacker is long gone.

Jamming is not as useful as a targeted attack, so this still seems like a defect in the WiFi spec.

For example, an attacker may wish to keep their network working while disrupting others (there is an example of Marriott hotels doing this linked elsewhere in the comments here).

Enterprise wifi systems from Cisco, xirrus, ruckus and others implement this feature for rogue access point suppression.

Wait what? Enterprise WiFi Systems are actively attacking each other if you put them close enough together and they overlap on some details like frequency band?

... skims search result for "rogue access point suppression"

wow this is just stupid

It's been a feature of enterprise WiFi for a long time. Airespace had the functionality before their acquisition by Cisco, that was March of 2005.

Edit: minor grammar clarification.

Though I don't see this feature in my environment anymore I am guessing it was pulled by Cisco after https://boingboing.net/2014/10/03/fcc-fines-marriott-for-jam...

Yup. You can buy a little open source ESP8266-based watch to do it too: https://dstike.com/

Unless the devices and AP support 802.11w, yes.

Temporarily. Most devices (rescan and) reassociate when this happens. Obviously this is enough to break devices that assume that the link is always up and never retry failed transmissions.

If you keep sending disassociate frames, most devices will continue dropping off and spending time reassociating. If you don't have significant quantities of local storage then that's enough to break video streaming.

When I was an edgy kid staying in hotels with shitty WiFi on vacation with my family, I would use a tool like this on Android to boot people off the WiFi and “clear up” some room.

Not proud of it today of course, but fun times ;)

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