Keep your neighbors from getting your wi-fi for wi-free

[2triky]

Anti-Wi-Fi paint keeps your wireless signal to yourself

Wed Sep 30, 2009

Don't like the idea of your neighbors rudely snooping on the wireless signal you slaved to pay for from the lazy comfort of their living room? It's not just about slowing down your connection; while they're downloading Mad Men via bittorrent, you could be on the hook for their actions.

Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best.

Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint.

The idea is simple: Use a special paint on walls where you don't want wireless to pass through (say the exterior of your house). The secret is mixing aluminum-iron oxide particles in with the paint. The metal particles resonate at the same frequency as Wi-Fi and other radio waves, so signals can't pass through the thin layer of pigment. Outsiders would simply be unable to access your wireless network, just as you, inside the house, won't be able to interlope on anything beamed on the outside.

Developed by the University of Tokyo, the paint is said to be the first that can block radio frequency in higher spectra where Wi-Fi and other higher-bandwidth communications occur rather than just low-frequency wireless like FM radio. Most Wi-Fi technologies operate at 2.4GHz; the Tokyo paint can reportedly block frequencies all the way up to 100GHz, with a 200GHz-blocking paint now in the works.

The paint isn't just of interest to those concerned about wireless leaking out of the building. Movie theaters have long been interested in finding a legal way to keep cell phones silent during screenings. Electronic jammers that actively block wireless signals are illegal, but passive materials that prevent wireless signals from getting through are not. Since the wireless-blocking paint can also block the lower-frequency signals that cell phones use, addled mobile junkies would have no outlet for reaching the outside world.

Some aren't convinced that anti-Wi-Fi paint makes a lot of sense for a secure situation, though. Says one engineer, "Surely the thought of having to redecorate a building in order to provide Wi-Fi security is more costly and complex than the security functionality available in even the cheapest of Wi-Fi access points..."

Good point.

[Ketou]

Can't you just use a password?

[2triky]

Can't you just use a password?

Indeed. I believe the article addresses that point in the last few lines. In any case, given your question...I'm with you, the paint seems like an awfully over-the-top solution in order to stave off freeloaders.

[wuchan]

Can't you just use a password?

I never paid for internet back in the states. Mac has an unusual ability to crack the passwords for wireless routers. All you need is kismac and a prism2 based usb PCMCIA card.

[canman]

Anyway who the hell paints in Japan. Everything is wallpaper. I don't think I have ever seen a painted wall in a house in all my time here in Japan.

[Behan]

Anyway who the hell paints in Japan. Everything is wallpaper. I don't think I have ever seen a painted wall in a house in all my time here in Japan.

Good point. I haven't seen one, either.

[Ketou]

My sunakabe walls have this horrid vomit yellowy brown paint....

[kino]

Passwords won't help you if you use WEP. Use a strong wi-fi encryption protocol (like wpa2) with a strong password and you can greatly reduce the risk of someone hopping onto your network.

[IkemenTommy]

All of a sudden, you get a drop in your cell phone reception because of this paint.. real smart, Japan

[alicia454]

Passwords won't help you if you use WEP. Use a strong wi-fi encryption protocol (like wpa2) with a strong password and you can greatly reduce the risk of someone hopping onto your network.

There are already working exploits for WPA using the weak TKIP encryption. However, you are still completely safe if you configure your wireless security with WPA2 with AES encryption, a strong password, and disable QoS. (QoS packet headers contain known data that can be leverage into a plain text attack.)

On a side note, even with the weakest 40bit WEP wireless security, it still takes a deliberate effort to capture wireless packets and crack the encryption. In most countries, this can be considered a criminal act. However many wifi enabled wireless devices: computers, mobile phone, portable game devices, media players, etc. will automatically connect to an open wireless network without any effort or intention by the user. In addition, many places offer free and open wireless access to the general public on purpose, and there is no mechanism within the wireless spec to distinguish between those deliberately open networks and the accidentally open networks by those who are too lazy or too stupid to put even the smallest amount of security.

Think of it leaving your apartment door open all the time 24/7, closing the door with a poor or non-existent lock, or closing it with a good lock. In the first case you cannot fault any strangers that wander in, but you can call the cops in the second and third cases since they deliberately opened the door and/or picked your lock.

In my case I am much more concerned with outsiders accessing internal computers, so not only do I have WPA2+AES on my home and office, I also put the wireless routers in a DMZ network, and then use SSH VPN tunnels to access internal networks. But it takes several seconds when to do the security handshake for WPA2, and many times after rebooting or awaking from sleep-mode, my laptop will accidently connect to a distant neighbours open network first, and I have to manually change it back to my wireless network, even though my network was the previous network it was using before.

[alicia454]

All of a sudden, you get a drop in your cell phone reception because of this paint.. real smart, Japan

Excellent point! And this is really bad when you consider that many younger households no longer have a land-based phone, and rely solely on mobile phones. What if you need to call 119?

[IkemenTommy]

Excellent point! And this is really bad when you consider that many younger households no longer have a land-based phone, and rely solely on mobile phones. What if you need to call 119?

Skype with your newly blocked internet?

[Coligny]

I somehow have excessive doubt about the Tokyo U origin of the 'discovery'.

Wifi is on the 2.4ghz band like microwaves, that's why you lose signal when you warm a pizza. Aluminum is well known stuff NOT to put in a microwave and all around rf blocker. Paint and wallpaper blocking wifi are on the market for quite some times and subject of many slashdot headlines...

[Ketou]

I somehow have excessive doubt about the Tokyo U origin of the 'discovery'.

Wifi is on the 2.4ghz band like microwaves, that's why you lose signal when you warm a pizza. Aluminum is well known stuff NOT to put in a microwave and all around rf blocker. Paint and wallpaper blocking wifi are on the market for quite some times and subject of many slashdot headlines...

Yep all my hats are lined with aluminium foil.

[nottu]

[2triky]

I somehow have excessive doubt about the Tokyo U origin of the 'discovery'.

Wifi is on the 2.4ghz band like microwaves, that's why you lose signal when you warm a pizza. Aluminum is well known stuff NOT to put in a microwave and all around rf blocker. Paint and wallpaper blocking wifi are on the market for quite some times and subject of many slashdot headlines...

Lead researcher on the project is Professor Shin-ichi Ohkoshi, Dept. of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo.

http://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/people/index.php/OHKOSHI,_Shin-ichi

[Greji]

I get so turned on when a woman talks like this.
Do you have beautiful, long hair repressed in a bun, a professional-style, slightly tight skirt, and black, horned-rim glasses by any chance?

Aww, don't tell me you're into applying frosting to the horn rims?

[nottu]

[Greji]

[quote="nottu"]Just a pubescent image bubbling up in the old consciousness –]

The J-version is to shoot a load on them while she's wearing them....
Kinda of a bukkake with eyes!

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Now that we're only to this kind of topic, when I first saw the title of the thread, I misread it to be: "Keep your neighbors from getting your wifey for wi-free."

I thought to myself, "Geez, why would I ever want to stop them from doing that?"

By the way, I can get off on both nottu's and Greji's fantasies here....