Module 7 was extremely interesting, and covered a lot of things I had no real knowledge base about. While I use wireless devices pretty regularly, like anybody, it’s not something I have actively looked into beyond the baseline I need to get connected and keep moderately secure. So, most of the information in this module was new to me, or expanded greatly on things I already knew.

Every chapter has these little stories about someone trying to learn more about the topic we’re covering for one reason or another. I generally don’t find that framing to be all that interesting for a lot of chapters, but I really thought that worked well here. It felt like it raised an interesting question. How DO you keep a traveling business connected and secure while covering a wide area? I actually felt like it connected the important points of the module to its practical uses.

I especially appreciated the section on Bluetooth security concerns. I’ve always been a bluetooth hater so I felt I little less silly about that. When I was a kid, I used to love to play with radios and walkie-talkies, and I had one of those cheap walkie talkies that they would sell for kids. I didn’t have a lot of neighborhood friends and I was an only child, so a lot of the time I would just run around the neighborhood looking for anyone else who might have a walkie talkie too that I could come into contact with. I never found anyone, but what I did find was that wireless landline phones were on the same frequency as my little radio and I could tune into their private phone calls. I felt weird about doing it so I never did it a lot, but remembering that has always made me extremely skeptical of wireless devices and their security, so I always opt for wired devices when I have the chance.

I also thought the section about changing your SSID was interesting. I never would have thought that would be important even though we do that with our network at home. I also had not considered turning the network off when we won’t be home. I am definitely going to start doing it.

I am a bit worried that while I got the concepts of this chapter just fine, all these different times of radio frequencies and similarly named wireless connection types and different hacking terms may have bounced off my forehead. WLAN WPA bluesnarfing bluejacking wardriving bluebugging… because this chapter had a lot that was new to me, it unfortunately had a lot of new terms and I know I am going to have to sit down and study pretty hard before the exam on this section.

Aside from that, the main thing I didn’t like about this chapter was that it mentioned Bluetooth being named after a 10th century Danish king and then never explained if there was a reason for that. I love trivia like that. Tell me more! I will be looking it up when I am done writing this.