Paint Provides Network Protection 262
thefickler writes "Forget WEP and WPA; I'm switching over to the EM-SEC Coating System, a recently announced paint developed by EM-SEC Technologies that acts as an electromagnetic fortress, allowing a wireless network to be contained within painted walls without fear of someone tapping in or hacking wireless networks. The EM-SEC Coating System is clearly the most secure option aside from stringing out the CAT5, and can be safely used to protect wireless networks in business and government facilities."
Blocking EM eh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blocking EM eh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice painted windows? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nice painted windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
A more likely situation is that a few years down the road a company grows and needs more space . The leasing agency who owns the building (re)moves a non-load bearing wall and rents them some more space from the unit next door. No one remembered that the company had this paint on and now you have an open wall. Could even happen with the traditional methods.
I'm even willing to speculate that because the other 3 walls are coated in it that it may offer a *slight* directional effect.
IMHO it depends on price. For an organization who has moderate security concerns and understands that caging their wireless signals will help (to varyng extents) and that the EM paint is a more cost effective helper than a full metal cage.
Just run the damn cable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical attempt to get government to spend oodles (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case: WPA (and many other layers of encryption) = free. Painting a building with special paint = £$massive.
What's scary is that someone from a government department will mandate this kind of tosh - and suddenly every government building (including leisure centres) will have to have it.
Of course, the irony is that - once they get paint like this, people will feel overly secure - reduce the more sensible types of encryption - and then leave the loading bay doors open, right next to a wireless repeater, pouring forth their unencrypted secrets.
Re:Lawsuits... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blocking EM eh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blocking EM eh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blocking EM eh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blocking EM eh... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Wait....a luddite website??? Isn't that an oxymoron?"
Sure it is, and it fits right in with this article about tin-foil paint.
yes, no, maybe ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is one thing when a person in a cinema uses their phone - lack of education. And it is another thing when someone receives an SMS, being notified by vibra, without disturbing anyone. What if the SMS bears news about an emergency, or something that is of a critical importance?
Do you think it is 'cool' when you have a problem and your doctor is notified via SMS while they're watching a movie in a cinema or having dinner in a restaurant that uses this uber-paint?
We need to solve the original problem, not substitute it with a different one. My guess is that the answer lies within ourselves - self improvement, educating our children, etc. Paint will not change the human nature, only humans will.
Re:Blocking EM eh... (Score:5, Insightful)
From 800 MHz to 1.9 GHz
(and something about 450MHz, but that isn't common)
Don't you think they can limit their product to 2.4 GHz +/- 500 MHz?
Re:yes, no, maybe ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yes, no, maybe ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not just governments -- PHBs everywhere. (Score:3, Insightful)
To be pithy, the ultimate problem is "zeal without knowledge" -- or, to be a bit more verbose, quick institutionalization of specific rules and practices for their own sake, rather than the development of an institution with intelligence and introspection built-in and distributed throughout.
Oh, bullshit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a thought for you: any good defense is built in layers. So if one layer fails, the others are there to prevent a complete catastrophe. This doesn't mean they won't enable encryption, maybe even an extra layer of encryption on top of WPA, it means that they'll _also_ have a physical EM shielding layer to pick the slack if someone made a mistake.
Additionally, the army has a long history of using and dealing with counter-measures. You don't see people trying to actively jam your home network, but in case of a war, that's exactly what the army might have to deal with. Whether actual pure jamming, or just an EMP from a nuke frying all your electronics, if the shit hits the fan big time. So when that happens, you'd rather most of it was shortcircuited by the building being a big Faraday cage.
Additionally, the army has to deal with EM radiation out of the building in more ways than some wardriver surfing for porn on your home network. It can be someone intentionally placing a transmitter somewhere, to some spy leaking the encryption keys, to being basically tagged for an EM seeking missile. While a Faraday cage won't make any of those 100% impossible, it gives you one extra chance against it. E.g., if someone left the door open near a repeater, you can notice you suddenly detect EM radiation around a building that was supposed to have none. E.g., sure, someone could climb on the roof and place their emitter for the missile there, but there's a chance someone will see them, whereas a modified laptop/clock/whatever in a drawer might not even get noticed until it's set to activate at midnight in anticipation for an enemy strike. Etc.
Additionally, the army is a bigger target than your home network. A wardriver will just go for whatever unsecured network is in the neighbourhood, and not even bother to crack your encryption. You're not worth it. You're one of millions of networks, each perfectly equivalent to any other, for his purposes. Even with the old WEP, chances are noone stood around long enough to gather packets and crack your keys, because, again, it wasn't worth the effort. A spy isn't as easily deterred. He won't go for Aunt Emma's home network instead. And he can devote disproportionate computing power and manpower to cracking the codes of a potential enemy superpower.
Of course, you can stick your head in the sand, put a big "WAP can't ever be cracked" poster and feel secure. What if you're wrong? Even for WEP it took two years for the vulnerability to be published. Plus, for the standard WW2 example, the Germans didn't think Enigma had been cracked either. (Nor did the civillians in most allied countries, for that matter. It was top secret.) What if some bright chinese mathematician comes up with some brilliant new way to decrypt it? Would you rather bet on that never happening, _or_ have an extra layer of defense just in case? Because from where I stand, given high enough stakes, the latter looks like the much smarter choice.
Basically, get your head out of the ass, and out of the "I'm teh genius, anyone doing things otherwise than me is automatically an idiot" mentality. Most often that should just be your hint that you don't actually understand what's happening there, and you're operating on just wild assumptions and pseudo-data pulled out of the ass to support that "I'm teh genius" preconception. And, as they say: Garbage In, Garbage Out.