What does the big glowing button do

[qasdfdsaq]

Simple question.

What does the big glowing button on the front of the Superhub do?

Simple answers please.

[Andrewcrawford23]

f memory sevres me right it meant to be sometihng to do with wireless

edit: how do you start a poll? been consideirng one recently

[Kymmy]

http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CMD=VIEW_ARTICLE&ARTICLE_ID=345040&CURRENT_CMD=SEARCH&CONFIGURATION=1002&PARTITION_ID=1&USERTYPE=1&LANGUAGE=en&COUNTY=us&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable

[jb66]

It's the wps setup button

[Kymmy]

Poll is started by checking the box (beneath the manage attachments below the main post box when starting a new thread)

[thenry]

nothing in modem mode ;)

[qasdfdsaq]

It's the wps setup button
Ah thanks

---------- Post added at 23:00 ---------- Previous post was at 23:00 ----------

http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CMD=VIEW_ARTICLE&ARTICLE_ID=345040&CURRENT_CMD=SEARCH&CONFIGURATION=1002&PARTITION_ID=1&USERTYPE=1&LANGUAGE=en&COUNTY=us&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable
I have *.virginmedia.com null routed. Because I can.

[Chrysalis]

LOL I didnt know it was a button until this thread, I just pressed it to confirm it is.

[thenry]

I visioned it was some VM turbo button... my geek then got on form and reminded me it was w.boring.p.s.. i guess we can all dream of a V12 :)

[Ken Jude]

I assumed it was the on-off switch when I got mine on Tuesday. Then I discovered the switch underneath :-)

Still trying to decide where the purple glow is that I'm supposed to see when in modem mode. I seem to have a mixture of blue and red rather than purple.

[qasdfdsaq]

Oh it changes colour in modem mode? Cool!

(Purple *is* a mix of red and blue, and usually made by mixing red and blue LEDs)

[thenry]

yeah the purple colour shown on the VMs site needs changing

[Ken Jude]

yeah the purple colour shown on the VMs site needs changing

It's certainly a bit misleading :)

[JadeFalcon]

can WPS be turned off totally ? :)

[Risco]

Turns my room at night into a Disco Inferno! :mad:

[qasdfdsaq]

So does this (http://qasdfdsaq.com/images/misc/IMG_8985s.jpg)

[jempalmer]

What was that!!? :)

[JadeFalcon]

i'm being serious... WPS is a security flaw and can be brute forced, revealing your wpa/wpa2 key ;)

[jempalmer]

Not sure if this is any help but,

http://virgin.lithium.com/t5/Fibre-optic-broadband-cable/WPS-FLAW-DISABLE-WPS-PIN-BECAUSE-YOUR-NETWORK-IS-OPEN/m-p/954531

[JadeFalcon]

will look into that in the morning tnx, but thats the exploit i was talking about though :)

[jempalmer]

Yes, I understood what you meant by the security flaw. Just not sure if that is the definitive answer :)

[Milambar]

Well, it may comfort you to know that after 8hrs of watching a disco (running reaper against the superhub), I can report the following.

1) Its blatently obvious someone is trying to crack your WPS PIN, the superhub lights up and flashes like a discotheque. You'd have to be blind not to notice it.

2) It withstood the bruteforce attack for 8hrs without success. Its still running, I shall leave it running throughout the night.

3) Looking at the reaper logs, every 30th attempt, I got a lot of "Error: Recieve timeout" kind of messages. It seems that for every 30 failed attempts, the superhub enforces a short timeout, before allowing any futher attempts. However the "timeout" seems to be variable, so it could just be a network error.

[qasdfdsaq]

Well, it may comfort you to know that after 8hrs of watching a disco (running reaper against the superhub), I can report the following.

1) Its blatently obvious someone is trying to crack your WPS PIN, the superhub lights up and flashes like a discotheque. You'd have to be blind not to notice it.

Other people have recently reported this behaviour on this forum and been told it's "normal" or "because of the speed upgrades".

[kwikbreaks]

What was that!!? :)Prototype Superhub 3

[Blackened]

What was that!!? :)A still from The Young Ones?

[Skie]

3) Looking at the reaper logs, every 30th attempt, I got a lot of "Error: Recieve timeout" kind of messages. It seems that for every 30 failed attempts, the superhub enforces a short timeout, before allowing any futher attempts. However the "timeout" seems to be variable, so it could just be a network error.

Could quite possibly just be the superhub failing under the load.

[jempalmer]

I've noticed, since my doubling from 30 to 60, that the activity lights on the Shub are constantly flashing. I did turn off WPS but it hasn't made any difference. I'm not sure that it is an attack on the device.

[adduxi]

I did turn off WPS but it hasn't made any difference.

Does Modem Mode negate the need to turn off WPS? I assume it does, but with the S'Hub you never know :rolleyes:

[Milambar]

Final result is that it cracked my wps pin, and recovered my wpa2-psk password in just a little shy of 10hrs total.


I've noticed, since my doubling from 30 to 60, that the activity lights on the Shub are constantly flashing. I did turn off WPS but it hasn't made any difference. I'm not sure that it is an attack on the device.


The flashing I was referring to, was the flashing of the large wps button on the front. The activity lights on the side were entirely normal. The WPS button flashed from red, to blue, to purple, back to red, etc, constantly during the brute force attack.

[jempalmer]

Ah, I misunderstood your post. My activity lights have been doing disco impressions since the upgrade. The WPS button is blue as normal. If WPS is disabled on the Shub is it still vulnerable to attack? If so then how do you protect against it?

[Milambar]

I guess that will be the next phase of the experiement, turn off the WPS on the superhub, and re-run the attack. As of right now, I can't answer that question.

I wouldn't worry too much about it at the moment however.

The attack, as of current, requires quite a degree of technical knowlege. There is no "off the peg" solution for it at the moment. While the program is available for download off code.google.com, it was somewhat tricky to use.

1) It only runs under Linux.
2) It only works with certain wireless cards that can be placed into monitor mode.
3) It requires root access.
4) You are required to manually compile it from a sourcecode tarball. There are no precompiled binaries.

Basically, there are not going to be any opportunist "scriptkiddies" using this attack at the moment. For someone to run this against you, they are going to be taretting you specifically.

That will change in the future (it always does, sadly). My advice is, be aware of it, be aware of the signs (flashing wps light), but don't be unduly worried, unless you po'd a geek.

[jempalmer]

Thanks for the reassurance. I wasn't actually worrying about it, just curious and interested in learning how these things work :)
P.S. Don't know any geeks (other than those on here of course :))

[qasdfdsaq]

Basically, there are not going to be any opportunist "scriptkiddies" using this attack at the moment. For someone to run this against you, they are going to be taretting you specifically.
Bah I'm going to target every VM router in range indiscriminately.

[jempalmer]

That, I wouldn't put past you! :)

[BomberAF]

It causes a balloon to fall from the ceiling and then the world ends if pressed!