ARUBA NETWORKS PASSES ULTIMATE SECURITY TEST AT EUROPEAN HACKER CONFERENCE
Wireless network successfully withstands all attacks at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin and maintains high performance under all conditions
Hanover, March 9, 2006 - Aruba Networks, the Mobile Edge Company, announced today that the wireless infrastructure it provided for participants at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress (22C3) Hackers Congress in Berlin, December 2005, successfully fought off all network attacks and intrusion attempts. Aruba, a worldwide leader in wireless and mobile networking, provided the congress organizers with a wireless LAN (WLAN) that covered the entire event area, enabling attendees to access the Internet and the other internal local area network (LAN) resources, and providing centralized management of all wireless access points.
CCC is the largest conference in Europe for hackers and IT professionals. It offers lectures and workshops on IT, computer security, the Internet, cryptography and discussions on the effect of technological advances on society.
During the event, Aruba detected 8,300 denial of service (DoS) attacks, which corresponds in a 12-hour conference day to an average of 173 DoS attacks per hour, or one DoS attack every 20 seconds. Furthermore, the 22C3 network team registered a total of 2,116 policy violations. A total of 64 rogue APs were detected, which were neutralized very quickly, either automatically by the system, or by localizing the attacker and manually "shutting it down".
The team responsible for the WLAN provisioning at the conference said, "Since the arrival of the first 802.11b access points, CCC has used wireless technology to allow participants to access the Internet and the internal LAN. However, over the last few years, problems with this solution have increased and we have had bad experiences with various solutions, whether they were of a commercial nature or open source. All these solutions were based on traditional, individually managed access points, so we had to come up with something new for this conference".
Aruba Networks provided the 22C3 team with a WLAN solution where all APs are centrally managed. The solution also has integrated performance features such as a policy enforcement firewall, secure authentication, encryption and advanced intrusion protection functions. To ensure optimum performance, Aruba products also have load-balancing features. Aruba's Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) can also automatically adjust and configure the channel settings and power levels for access points across the entire WLAN.
Aruba supported the 22C3 technicians in the run up to the event with training and configuration assistance, and also during the conference with Aruba staff. Together with the 22C3 Network Operation Center (NOC) team, Aruba built an infrastructure consisting of an Aruba 2400 Mobility Controller and a total of 37 AP-61 and AP-60 access points, eleven of which worked as dedicated air monitors. The air monitors scanned the frequency band during the whole event in order to detect possible breaches. Wherever possible, the air monitors thwarted the attacks directly "over the air" in order to keep the WLAN running properly at all times.
Aruba's wireless intrusion protection features detected unauthorized wireless devices and rogue APs and shut them down using an automatic reply. The location of the rogue APs could be pinpointed to within a few meters and shown on the building's floor plan using visualization software. Using precisely-defined, high-capacity protocol prioritization, the network was also always operational, despite intensive use of peer-to-peer software by the participants.
"We are glad that we have found sponsors who can support us with professional equipment," says Tim Pritlove of the 22C3 Events Committee. "The congress has now reached a size where the participants would not forgive a faulty network".
As the hacker community persistently finds new ways to break into networks and circumvent existing defenses, we continuously monitor the state of the art," said Luiz Eduardo dos Santos, technical support engineer and leader of Aruba's Wireless Security Incident Response Team. "Implementing and operating networks at conferences such as 22C3 provides us a wealth of knowledge about new hacking methods and attacks - knowledge we use to strengthen Aruba's products and solutions."
Leading up to and during the entire event, Aruba was actively and very efficiently supported by the distributor mms communication AG www.mms-ag.de.
About 22C3
22C3 was the 22nd edition of the Chaos Communication Congress. This congress (the "European Hacker Conference") is organised by the Chaos Computer Club as a "no profit" event. It is the biggest event of its kind in Europe and attracts each year over 3,000 participants from all over the world. This event takes place once a year in the Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany. More information is available under http://events.ccc.de.
About Aruba Networks, Inc.
Aruba Networks is a fast-growing enterprise infrastructure company enabling the mobile edge, an evolutionary new network architecture that addresses three top concerns of IT managers--mobility, security and convergence. The mobile edge extends the reach of enterprise networks, providing secure access to information and voice services anywhere a user needs them, enabling new applications, allowing organizations to compete more effectively, and bringing about dramatic economic benefits. To deliver the mobile edge, Aruba manufactures and markets a complete line of fixed and modular mobility controllers, wired and wireless access points, and an advanced mobility software suite. Privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California, Aruba has operations in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and employs staff around the world. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com.