Avishai's IEEE 802.11 Wireless Lan page

Publications

  1. A. Wool. Why security standards sometimes fail.
    Communications of the ACM, Inside Risks Column, 45(12):144, December 2002.
    Here is a local copy (pdf). Also available from Peter Neumann's site as Inside Risks #150.

  2. A. Wool. A note on the fragility of the ``Michael'' message integrity code.
    IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications, 3(5):1459-1462, September 2004. Here is a local copy (pdf).

  3. A. Wool. Lightweight key management for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs with key refresh and host revocation.
    ACM/Springer Wireless Networks, 11(6):677-686, 2005. Here is a local copy (pdf).

The information below is from 2002. I have not kept up with HostAP or with Linksys hardware so the information here may be obsolete.

Upgrading a Linksys WMP11 Wireless PCI card to firmware v1.4.9

If you follow the HostAP project you may have heard that the Linksys WMP11 Wireless PCI card only works correctly with HostAP if it has secondary firmware v1.4.9. Unfortunately, as of 26 Aug 2002, Linksys only provides an upgrade to v1.4.2 V1.4.2 is known to NOT work with HostAP.

Several people on the mailing list (myself included) were looking for a newer upgrade utility, but none was found. However, people did donate the necessary HEX files. Using them, and my favorite hex editor (emacs in hexl-mode), I patched the Linksys upgrade utility. The result worked for me on 2 Linksys cards. It may work for you too.

June 2003 I have heard that Linksys is now selling WMP11 PCI cards that have a Broadcom chipset under the hood (and not the Intersil Prism II). These new cards are totally incompatible with HostAP in general and with my patched upgrade utility in particular. I don't know whether it's possible to tell, from outside the box, which flavor of WMP11 you have. If you know the answer, drop me a note...

Warning: using this utility is risky, and may damage your Linksys card (or worse)! 
Do NOT use this utility to upgrade a PCMCIA card: I know of at least one person who tried and ended up with a frozen card.

  1. Read the instructions carefully, and decide if this is worth your risk. You have NO WARRANTY that this utility will do you any good, and a fair chance that it will do damage.
  2. Here is the WMP11-1.4.9-patched.zip utility.

Useful links

  1. Bernard Aboba's Unofficial 802.11 Security Web Page
  2. Jouni Malinen's HostAP page.
  3. Jean Tourrilhes' Wireless Tools page.
  4. Back to my home page.
Last modified: Sun Jun 8 17:01:29 IDT 2003