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There is a well known WAP that lots of people use. Someone comes in with a laptop equipped with a sniffer. The laptop sniffs people trying to log on to the WAP. It intercepts the connection, and when people try to log on to the WAP, they unknowingly log on through that person's laptop instead. All communication between the WAP and people's laptops go through that person's laptop. That person's laptop is able to block access to certain websites that the WAP would normally allow.

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Why did you have to make such a bad and vague question title? – random♦ Mar 20 '11 at 3:41
Would a "wireless router" set to wireless access point and wireless bridge mode, do it? I read something like that lets comps connect to it, and lets it connect to another identical device. – barlop Mar 20 '11 at 4:34
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(I suppose you are you talking about WPA? Wap: Wireless Application Protocol / WPA: Wi-Fi Protected Access. The first refers to a standard for mobile phones accessing the net, the second is a crypto standard for WiFi)

Theoretically if you can get the WiFi password of the Access Point (by sniffing), you can broadcast the same WiFi network name (a.k.a. SSID) with a laptop. Thus anyone connecting to the WiFi broadcast by the pirate laptop would be going through its routing. So he can deny access to site eventually.

I don't know how the 802.11 standards deals with multiple APs and what would be the behaviour of one connecting from a zone that is covered by both the legal and pirate AP.

This is commonly know as a MITM (Man in the middle) attack. (See for references : article, wikipedia MitM, wikipedia security of Wireless comms)

Eavesdropping is commonly countered by the use of secure connections such as SSL (HTTPS) and VPNs. (Provided you don't accept unverified certificates).

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I think his WAP is Wireless Access Point. – NReilingh Mar 20 '11 at 3:04
Oh! not used to that acronym :P Thanks – M'vy Mar 20 '11 at 9:45
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up vote 2 down vote

It's not only possible, but easy. It's called an Evil Twin attack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_twin_(wireless_networks)

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Your link doesn't work. – Billare Mar 20 '11 at 3:32
@billare Thanks, fixed. – bahamat Mar 20 '11 at 3:35
I don't think that's exactly it. That method is about fooling users into connecting to another router. What I'm talking about is actually intercepting a connection attempt to a legitimate WAP and passing information to and from the router like a proxy. – OSX NINJA Mar 26 '11 at 4:23
@OSX Jedi: That's the same thing. The client isn't connecting to the "real" router, it's connecting to the attacking router. The attacking router will then impersonate real the client to the real router. – bahamat Apr 1 '11 at 19:43
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You could do it with a Laptop + a Fon router modified to run Jasager here is an article on it... http://www.hak5.org/w/index.php/Jasager

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