Comments on: Wi-Fi Jacking Extremely Common (45% of People Do!)

By: fever

fever — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:46:29 +0000

pretty difficult to have a secure wireless ap these days with out something that monitors and authenticates regularly.

By: Sir Henry

Sir Henry — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:04:28 +0000

This is something that will likely never go away. There will always be users who simply want things to work out of the box. For that reason, the default security will simply be no security at all. It is amazing that companies bend to the will of those who ultimately become the victims due to their ignorance of security. I know that if I am out and about and need to connect, that my ssh tunnel is the first thing to be established so that no prying eyes will be able to see what I am doing. My nefarious side thinks that routing those connected to the unsecured AP through Cain and Abel is a fun test in sociology.

By: Pantagruel

Pantagruel — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:54:25 +0000

While on vacation in any major city of our lovely planet you realy do NOT need to go to an internet cafe anymore. The amounts of open wirreless access points is disturbing, the mentioned 45% is to my own experience by far too little. More disturbing is the fact that it doesn’t always need to be some average Joe/Jane who doesn’t have the knowledge or isn’t willing to pay for a proper setup. Even larger companies simply forget to hire a pro and seal off there wireless appliances. WEP/PKA-PSK sound like buzz word of whom only a few seem to graps their value and given the number of wireless appliances in a household daddy sure doesn’t want to bother too much and doing without properly protecting his wlan seems to fit best to the childrens portable game stations, or even dad’s streaming device.

By: dirty

dirty — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:16:20 +0000

Reticent:
I think I saw this poll a few weeks back…i believe it was was a UK based poll. Cant say for sure off the top of my head…

By: Nobody_Holme

Nobody_Holme — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:16:57 +0000

Thing is…. why would anyone with the skills to break even WEP bother when they could just use that unsecured network over there… Those skills are for when they’re going to be worthwhile, not for use just to get net access when your can get it anyway much more easily…

By: Alden

Alden — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:27:39 +0000

WEP won’t stop a determined hacker, no, but out of 45% of “people” (I suspect they mean wireless users) probably only a handful are going to be determined enough to try to crack a secured network – the rest will just look for another unsecured network because it’s easier.

By: Reticent

Reticent — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:44:02 +0000

where the hell did they do the poll? 45% of people wouldnt know what wifi was let along how to crack it. I’d say, generously, it would be 1 in 50.

By: midnitesnake

midnitesnake — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:42:27 +0000

quote: Alden:
Ideally they’d come with WEP turned on to a random key…

That is a very bad idea, I think you must mean WPA, as WEP can be broken within 2-15mins (depending on key strength) using a Linux or Windows machine. Nothing beats a 63 character WPA key, and theres not to many 63 character dictionaries out there.

By: Hunnter

Hunnter — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:12:24 +0000

I admit i have before.
I never used it to do anything secure, because it is always best to be safe rather than have your accounts (from banking to emails) screwed with (almost deserving though haha)

I actually run a limited open wireless service (basically just port 80 and some other little things)
I have “unlimited” bandwidth and 8mbit, and i barely use much of that speed most of the time, so why not, eh?

By: Alden

Alden — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 09:35:27 +0000

The average computer user barely knows how to set up a firewall. If router set up was simplified, perhaps it would help reduce the number of unsecured wireless routers. Ideally they’d come with WEP turned on to a random key, and a setup disk which would automatically configure the right settings in Windows.

Getting people to read the manual would be a good start too.