Tracking down ad hoc wifi network

[stebbo]

Hi All,

We have about 800 odd student Macs at our school. The majority are managed, the rest will be added slowly.

We are having students creating ad-hoc wireless networks, many with inappropriate names and I’m worried about the security aspects. I can see these popping up all day in the list of available wireless networks.

Is there any way to either
1) use a piece of software to associate the current wifi network name with a MAC Address (or IP address or even better a machine name), or
2) add a setting in the workgroup to disable the ad-hoc network creation?

I can’t see any reason to allow the ad-hoc networks, but am not necessarily keen on locking things down too tight. I’d rather chat with those involved and educate them on the proper usage.

I have tried nscan but couldn’t get it to show me the available wireless networks list… Is there some other piece of software which might do this for me?

Thanks heaps in advance.

Cheers,
Chris.

[tlarkin]

I am not sure of exactly how you can track it down, maybe install little snitch on your client and connect to the adhoc and then watch traffic from point A to point B?

However, the airport daemon has options to set Ad Hoc networks to only be allowed to be created if done so by an admin by running this:
[code]sudo /usr/libexec/airportd en1 -ibss_admin 1[/code]

That is basically a link to the 802.11 frame work found here:
[code]
bash-3.2# /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -help
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport AirPort v.528.1 (528.1.0)
Supported arguments:
-z –disassociate Disassociate from any network
-i[] –ibss=[] Create IBSS
-x –xml Print info as XML
-s[] –scan=[] Perform a wireless broadcast scan.
Will perform a directed scan if the optional is provided
-r –repeats= Repeat the command the specified number of times
-A[] –associate=[] Associate to network.
Will prompt for network name if arg is not specified
and if necessary, for a password if the network is using WEP or WPA.
The following additional arguments may be specified with this command:
–bssid= Specify BSSID to associate with
–password= Specify a WEP key or WPA password
-I –getinfo Print current wireless status, e.g. signal info, BSSID, port type etc.
-P –psk= Create PSK from specified pass phrase and SSID.
The following additional arguments must be specified with this command:
–ssid= Specify SSID when creating a PSK
-c[] –channel=[] Set arbitrary channel on the card
-h –help Show this help
[/code]

This will now require all users to input admin credentials to create adhoc networks.

[stebbo]

Thanks a heap for that one. I shall give it a try.

Cheers,
Chris.

[Author]

Posts