the mini Blog

The image above was taken at the Digital Life Show in NYC on Friday. You can see the unlaunched interface for the Nintendo DS’s Wi-Fi capabilities. Some interesting features include:

• Save settings for up to three connections
• Auto-detection of available WiFi networks
• Support for primary and secondary DNS servers
• Support for DHCP and static IP addresses
• Support for WEP (But not WPA)

The last ‘feature’ is what concerns most people. WEP has been out for a while and I have seen videos showing how you can crack a WEP key in 5 minutes using Linux, and it even showed me what programs to use (they are all open source). My PSP can do WPA, so why couldn’t the DS. My D-link Access Point runs on WEP as there is no need for a really secure connection, what hackers would live in my area? It is pretty safe. But in America you aren’t safe anywhere. Sure who would care about someone intercepting their game on their DS, but the problem arises when you have to convert your access point to use WEP because the DS can’t do WPA. This means all your data will be susceptible to getting hacked.
This may not be a big a problem because many people still are using wired connections, but for new people who aren’t all tech savy and get into it don’t really understand all this so they may go for WEP only, or worst of all no protection. I know that my neighbour has the same D-link AP as I do and he has no protection. I managed to get into his network and access is AP IP address. I could even log into the AP with the same ‘Admin’ ‘Admin’ username and password that came default. I could have taken over his network and could have had free WiFi. But because I’m no black hat hacker I just let him know about the problem.

read more (screenshots of DS’s WiFi on Flickr)