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Growth of Wi-Fi Opens New Path for Thieves
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Mar 19, 2005 12:35 PM
from the high-tech-breakins dept.
from the high-tech-breakins dept.
E. Harley writes "Wi-Fi connections are popping up all over the place from retails locations, schools, municipalities, and homes. Unintentionally or not, most of these wi-fi hot spots never change the system's default settings, hide the connection from others, or encrypt the data sent over it. This NY Times article [Free registration required] talks about the size and extent of the problem, and what has happened with law enforcement investigating criminals using these public connections. Also, the article updates us on an earlier Slashdot story about wardriving. That case is still pending."
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License to steal? (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading the article, it gives me the impression that you have a license to do just about any illegal internet activity so long as your WiFi router uses the default SSID, broadcasts its SSID and keeps the default passwords. If anything is traced back to you, you just blame the WiFi-Boogeyman for any illegal activities originating from your IP address.
Re:License to steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:License to steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just being accused of a crime is enough of a problem to worry about.
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article is telco/cable demonization/propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
--theft
--child porn
--terrorism
And the article here never even questions whether associating these practices with wifi could be a subterfuge by the telcos and cable companies to demonizes wifi so as to be able to outlaw municipal wifi through legislation, which is what they are afraid of, as that will cause them to cut their broadband prices.
This whole article is a propaganda piece, bought and paid for by the vested interests, such as telcos and cable companies.
What a sham is the NY Times. Just another cog in the CorpGovMedia propaganda machine...
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Re:Simple! (Score:4, Informative)
Hooray for double negatives!
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Re:Simple! (Score:5, Informative)
Google "etherchange" and see what you get... Here [ntsecurity.nu] is the first hit... MAC addresses don't prove diddley...
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Re:Simple! (Score:3, Informative)
To the world outside your local network, every MAC address coming from your local network appears to be the same one - the one of your router. Any such WiFi Boogeyman would appear to have the same exact MAC address as you.
As for the "more sophisticated tracking"... There are some things that can be done but to be honest they're not very sophisticated. Suffice it to say that
simpsons (Score:4, Funny)
Fair Use? (Score:3, Funny)
Well than, since 90% of Slashdot users do not pirate intellectual property, I can only assume that you already own a legally purchased copy of the Simpson's episode in question, and thus this would be "fair use". Right?
coffee house voyeur (Score:5, Interesting)
What's with the pathetic default settings? (Score:5, Insightful)
While the user has to take some blame for technical ignorance, the AP makers also have to take some blame here since they have the tech people to implement better security.
--
Want a free iPod? [freeipods.com]
Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. [freegamingsystems.com] (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof [wired.com]
Registration free link (Score:5, Informative)
I'm Not a Network Administrator... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I realize that I'm the exception, but how hard can it be to type 192.168.1.1 in a web browser? Of course, people should check the air pressure in their tires once a week, and clean the air filter on the furnace once in a while...
Re:I'm Not a Network Administrator... (Score:3, Interesting)
So far so good.
His elder daughter was surfing away happily, but could not access the other PCs. It turned out that the strongest signal she was receiving was from an unencrypted network in a neighbouring house/flat.
That
Re:I'm Not a Network Administrator... (Score:4, Interesting)
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We should have gotten this out by now (Score:4, Interesting)
Some people like to share we should encorage that... The best possible solution is for the router to limit bandwidth to outside connections (length of use = more bandwidth? First 2 users connected get most bandwidth?)
Even windows doesn't have sharing on by default... Allowing users to sit behind your firewall isn't a huge deal, there are tonnes of users sharing their windows dir on Kazaa or whatever if someone wanted to be malicious they should.
There is some importance in making life better for other people, if you don't when you go on a camping trip people around you will be weighing how hungry bears are against the $ in your wallet.
and the problem is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell me.. When did it become my fault that someone can download tens of thousands of customer credit cards? Perhaps if these credit cards had been ditched long before the Internet we wouldn't be having that problem. Kerberos, challenge-response, PKI, and two-factor authentication devices have all been available for quite some time.
Someone tell the Secret Service to stop monitoring IRC connections and go after lazy banks instead, or something
The Solution (Score:3, Funny)
After these latter measures are in place, we can all be perfectly secure in knowing that no porn, violence, homosexual acts, books about evolution, untampered news, or any worthwhile content is being viewed by anyone in the U.S.
P.S. Or we could just make encryption and wifi security easy to implement and show people how to use it.
P.P.S. Nah... the former solution seems a lot more comprehensive in terms of public oppression... I mean security.
Make WiFi secure by default (Score:4, Insightful)
This problem could be reduced dramatically if WAPs shipped from the factory with complex random passwords WEP enabled and complex random WEP keys.
As an example on a new HPaq server the iLO remore management interface has complex random password, printed on a label on the device.
Imagine if Linksys, etc. did the same thing with WAPs, where no 2 WAPs with the same WEP key or password.
Sure some users would just disable the protection but I'm betting if you made it halfway convienient that most won't. Make it more work to be insecure and the security will win most of the time. You might even be able to reduce this further by having the admin interface give you lots of warnings and make you jump through hopps to disable the security funcions.
Of course secrity could be improved upon even further if the default security was better than WEP but I think that's too high a barrier for the average user to tolerate. WEP may suck but it's considerably better than wide open.
The incentive is to NOT secure it out of the box (Score:4, Insightful)
The incentive for the manufacturers is for wireless access points to NOT be secure out-of-the-box.
If it's not secure, it's plug-and-play. Plug it in, it's up. If it's more secure, it makes instalation (to the point of getting traffic through it) more difficult.
Insecurity doesn't affect the user until they get burned - mainly by lower performance as their bandwidth gets leached (assuming their important applications, like banking, already use end-to-end encryption). Leaching might not even be noticed. If it is, they can diagnose it and tighten things up.
Security impacts ease-of-use, and thus sales.
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The defaults are the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the easiest way to solve this problem is to disable the wireless part of the router until you run the setup program (or even better, make it launch the browser so it will work on any OS) and make you go through the steps of enabling encryption and everything.
I have WPA enabled on my wireless router (a Linksys WRT54G with the latest firmware) and MAC filtering. I broadcast my SSID ("Break this"), but that is more for ease of use then anything.
I then enabled SSL for the admin pages, so I must type https://192.168.1.1/ (the actual IP is different) to reach the router's admin page. I figure between SSL and WPA, it will be pretty hard for someone to break into my router's admin page.
The key is, with WPA and MAC filtering that will keep out all but the most determined out. If they ever got past that and onto my wireless network, I have logs so I could manually block them.
piggybacker != thief (Score:5, Insightful)
i'll play devil's advocate, for a minute:
the airwaves are supposed to be public.
therefore, if there's a "thief," the thief would be the group that cordones the public airwaves off and claims them as their own private property.
happened to me (Score:4, Interesting)
WiFi == Identity-Theft/Child Porn/Terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
And what a coincidence that just as this article is being published, that all over America, state governments are trying to decide whether to outlaw municipal wifi. Of course, this drive to outlaw municipal wifi is in NO WAY connected to this article that tends to associate wifi with THEFT, CHILD PORN, and TERRORISM. And in no way would the telco and cable TV lobbies that stand to lose BILLIONS (if municipal wifi takes off) try to get the NY Times to help make wifi look bad.
No way the media would do that! They have integrity. They would never sell out to the telco-cableTV lobby like that.
Would they?
Re:this article NEVER questions their motives (Score:4, Interesting)
you wrote:
Prove it. You always make these unfounded claims with nothing to back it up.
I cannot PROVE it. I do not have a complete audio-video record of every waking moment of everyone who is in control of the NY Times. But I don't HAVE to prove it. All I have to do is show that there is a LIKELIHOOD that the this article and others are biased in favor of established industry players. Really, it should be obvious to anyone who is unbiased.
You can't even show that there is a pattern of industry favortism in the NY Times' articles, but even if I showed you numerous articles that praised wireless access, you'd try to claim (again, with no proof) its just another conspiracy to make people think that they aren't in cahoots.
Oh, so, in order to point out that this article unquestioningly cites opinions that demonize wifi, I have to FIRST be able to go back through the archives and show a pattern? Look, the evidence is right in front of us. We ALL know that established corporate lobbies want to shut competition. We ALL know that they manipulate the media to do so. With that in mind, why, oh, WHY does this article NOT take that into account? Why doesn't the reporter acknowledge the huge industtry that stands to profit from demonizing wifi as this article does? Isn't that what fair journalism is all about?
In short, there is nothing NY Times can do to be good in your eyes unless they say exactly what fits your own socialist agenda.
I am not a socialist. Period. I am a Leftist. But Rush Limbaugh and the Wall St Journal did not provide you with the information to make that distinction, did they? How unfortunate for you...
Anything that deviates from this must be some sort of Republican conspiracy to consolidate corporations and oppress the people.
The Democrats are only marginally better then the Republicans.
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