Home WiFi Network Security Failings Exposed 161
An anonymous reader writes "The shocking state of home wireless (Wi-Fi) network security in the UK has been revealed by a life assistance company study. CPP used an 'ethical hacker,' Jason Hart, to test thousands of Wi-Fi networks across six UK cities, including London. He found that many didn't even have a password and roughly half of home UK Wi-Fi networks could be hacked in less than 5 seconds."
"Life assistance" = identity theft protection (Score:4, Informative)
If you were in any doubt as to why they were sponsoring a study which discovered something scary about the intertrons.
No password WiFi != unsecured (Score:5, Informative)
My Wi-Fi has no password, and that's a purposeful choice. While evaluating the passwords on WiFi that does have a password is a reasonable analysis, it's not reasonable to call any WiFi without a password as unsecured.
Re:Default password security (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunately that only changes the login for your router admin page. That has nothing to do with WEP/WPA/WPA2.
Re:No password WiFi != unsecured (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No password WiFi != unsecured (Score:5, Informative)
Not if the communication is not encrypted and there is any traffic at the time.
Rubbish. (Score:4, Informative)
"* We found that nearly a quarter of private wireless networks has no password whatsoever attached, making them immediately accessible to criminals."
So that's not just home networks then, that includes businesses deliberatly running open wifi as a service to visitors, and all sorts of commercial access points that are "open" in that they get you to a login provider for the service, which you then have to log in to? How many these "private wireless networks" are adhoc wireless on one PC connected to nothing in particular?
The first link is just an advert selling snake-oil, the second contains no information to speak of. No link to any "report" at all.
Re:OT Question (Score:3, Informative)
ipcop firewall with a red green and blue interface. run them on the blue interface and run dans guardian on it as well as limit the bandwidth and ports allowed.
20 minutes work. and less than $60.00 if you find a Nokia IP130 firewall used.
Re:Default password security (Score:3, Informative)
This points out a major issue, many non technical users often do not know the difference between security of the router and security of the wifi signal itself. Many people just change the router's password and think they are "safe".