On a Toshiba Laptop and Guess what?

[Ernst0]

My wireless is not switch able to off using the F8 key.

Now I have noticed that applications have access to the wireless even if I have it selected to be off.

That means I can assume since I cannot physically shut off the actual hardware that my system can stay connected and be accessible even with the red X of the things are off.

Just a heads up.. Fedora 14 here...

Sucks for sure.. Security issue for sure.

Perhaps I should do something but what?

Thanks.

I wondered what the drag on the CPU was when I was offline.

Any help is appreciated.

[Dan]

Moved to EOL.

[stevea]

Originally Posted by Ernst0

My wireless is not switch able to off using the F8 key.

Now I have noticed that applications have access to the wireless even if I have it selected to be off.

That means I can assume since I cannot physically shut off the actual hardware that my system can stay connected and be accessible even with the red X of the things are off.

Red X ?

No your utilities (like ifconfig or ethtool) can generally access the interface even if you have the device switched off with an externa switch (the PCI interface remains up) They can't create a connection to another system - so there is no major security issue.

If you have no switch - then it's entirely software controlled - so any root exploit could potentially enable the wifi. If you remove the driver module (modprobe -r yourwifidrv) then a root exploit could still re-install the driver.

I suggest you shut off your wifi with network manager and live with it. If you have a root exploit, then a wifi connection is the least of your problems.