Hi, I’m Bricker Jr.'s dad. You may remember me from such threads as “What the Hell is ‘Pokemon’?” and “Why is my wallet suddenly empty?”
For those that missed these earlier classics, my son, age 6, has discovered Pokemon with the fervor of a new convert, and despite not being any kind of a computer or console gamer, my household has in short order become innundated with all things Pokemon.
One of these is “Pokemon Diamond,” a handheld game played on the Nintendo DS. Now, not only is this game stand-alone experience, but he can trade captured Pokemon-animals with his friends and even battle his creatures against their creatures through the magic of wireless communications.
If the friends are face-to-face, everything is fine. But this piece of gos se hardware also can connect using wi-fi to a local access point and thence to Nintendo World HQ, where you can connect with your friend at his house and trade or battle.
It is this latter configuration that is making me crazy.
It doesn’t support WPA encryption.
Now, again for those that don’t follow these things closely, there are two general types of encryption available for your home wi-fi. WEP, which stands for “Wired Equivalent Privacy,” is a most egregiously misnamed standard, since it provides all the security of a soggy piece of Kleenex.
The correct way to secure your wireless network is to use WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and a long random passphrase, which makes your wireless traffic reasonably secure.
In the Bricker household, we have a wireless access point, running WPA2 and using a 40 character random passphrase.
Can’t use Nintendo DS to connect to the Global Trade System. No, no. These horsecock lovers don’t support WPA. I call their tech support:
“Unplug your computer before using your DS, and it then it can’t be compromised.”
Listen, shit-for-brains (which is really a compliment, since even if you had shit between your ears it could probably still accomplish some sort of pseudo-synaptic activity, which would surpass whatever you’re doing with your head) the point is not to protect my internal network from attack. The point is to prevent my connection from being used. And unless I enter a new WEP key every time, an attacker can sniff out and decrypt my traffic and then wait until the DS session is over and my computer is back on, if the goal was to attack my internal network!
I explain this, politely redacting the synaptic shit observation. Response?
“Uh… the wireless router will still work if you turn your computer off, you know.”
Yes. Yes, I do know. Not that your comment has fuck-all to do with the objection I just raised. Perhaps I should have chosen to speak English instead of aboriginal click-language. Oh, wait, I DID say it in English, rat-fucker!
So. After that conversation, which was as welcome as George Soros at the White House, I have to figure out how to support the ardent desire of my child to battle his friends over Nintendo DS wi-fi without compromising my local system’s security.
I have a plan involving an additional WAP connected to an inline bridge that does packet destination filtering, but that’s going to be a bother to set up.
I hate Nintendo and their ass faces.
