NSA won't say if it knew about KRACK

All of these articles and reports about KRACK keep repeating the same thing:

> The caveat is that an attacker would need to be within a close physical proximity to the Wi-Fi network to carry out the attack.

I'm no expert on any of this but I don't know how much we can count on that little bit of "safety". Remember NIGHTSTAND? 802.11 attacks (paraphrasing) "from up to eight miles away".

Yeah, you're not gonna pull it off with an off-the-shelf laptop with built-in Wi-Fi and antenna. With a powerful transceiver and directional antenna (both easily purchased) though, "close physical proximity" can suddenly be a lot farther away.