Drive-By Hacking in London

delibes writes "The BBC News website carries this story about hacking wireless networks in London's financial centre. " There isn't really much in the way of details, just saying that many businesses don't encrypt their networks. They talk about finding 12 networks while driving 1km... 8 of which had no encryption.

Comments

Re:Yeah, you may have gotten the bank's secret dat

[Rogerborg]

The thing that you have to understand about the UK is that there really is a history of these things been put in place and then not used, through apathy, budget constraints, or good old fashioned incompetence.

The omnipresent cameras are useless for identifying individuals; all they are used for is to grab grainy, wobbly pictures of suspects that identify height, clothing (maybe) and gender (if you're lucky) which are then splashed all over tabloids and the TV as part of appeals for actual eye witnesses to come forward.

A few more examples. The UK has had a DMCA since 1988, but few people know about it, because it's never been used. The RIP act, that mandates prison sentences if you fail to hand over encryption keys, is again a paper tiger because the Home Office doesn't have the budget to train anyone in its use. In fact, the police already suffer from having a surfeit of powers.

There was a case last year of a young student who went missing, sparking a nationwide hunt for her. She (or someone purporting to be her) sent an email from an internet cafe claiming that she was all right. The police eventually found her not by tracking back the message through the headers to find the cafe (a 30 second process), or through cameras, or through any technological procedure. Instead, they guessed where she was by looking at her past history, then blanketed the area with police handing out leaflets to cybercafes, until they got a response from an owner, then they staked it out until she turned up again.

So, sure, the UK has Draconian laws (but I'm sure the US will catch up), and sure, open networks and all that, but on the other hand, blurgh, it's a typical wet and windy British night tonight, and the Evil Things will be tucked up all warm and cosy in bed, not prowling the land looking for innocents to molest. ;-)