In a sidebar in this chapter we describe what we think is a joke by which college students computers would be authenticated by their MAC addresses. Why is this a bad security idea? Describe another way that a computer could automatically be recognized as authorized to join a wireless network. (By automatically, we mean that the computers owner and perhaps the system administrator would perform some initial setup, but after that, the connection would occur without human action.) Separate from the technical question, is it wise from a security standpoint to have a computer automatically join a network? Justify your answer.

(Computer Security II)