WLANs As Spam Conduit

Saint Aardvark writes "According to this article, a honeypot was recently set up on two wireless LANs. 25% of the connections observed were deliberate, and 71% of those were to send spam. Even more reason to take care of your ether." These statistics should be taken with a salt lick...

Comments

Um...no.

[waldoj]

Wait, so this company, "Z/Yen," has determined that 71% of malicious connections to wireless networks are used for sending spam, and they've done so on the strength of setting up a grand total of two WiFi hotspots in one unspecified city (which I assume to be London, because that's where they're located) for an unspecifed time span...and this leads to conclusive results? That's just stupid.

In other news, based on my survey of my apartment, 75% of people are running Mac OS X, and 25% are running Linux.

-Waldo Jaquith

Serious?

[molrak]

So let me get this straight. As opposed to just sitting in the apartments or offices or whatever, spammers are now riding around major urban areas trying to find insecure wireless networks? This, to me, would seem to be a tremendous waste of time.

I'll admit, I don't understand why people spam; but the economics of such a thing simply don't seem practicle. The 25% would seem to be about right to me, but that 18% of the total was just for spam, just doesn't seem to add up.

Then again, as Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

Misquote

[Mattygfunk1]

... and 71% of those were to send spam.

The summary misquotes the article here. 71% of the connections sent email - not necessarily spam email. I am surprised the figure wasn't higher.

Anyway it is hardly groundbreaking news that you have to secure wireless internet connections.

_____
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Bad logic.

[twitter]

Huh? What statistics? Where was this thing set up? How many hits did they record, 4? Did they deliver the spam? Was the welcome message, "Tell all your leet friends about the spam relay here!" Is someone at the RSA office the type that thinks they can make a fast buck selling dick enlargers? F+

The study, as presented is useless except to divide people. They might have just as well said that the internet itself was evil for enabling spam. I can say the same thing about materials used to make billboards. The RSA says, "Don't share, people." Great!

You arent kidding

[t0ny]

so that means that, citing their statistics, at least 30% of people have closet spammers living near them. Ya right!

I mean, Im sure most people living near me wouldnt mind downloading pr0n with my connection, but sending spam? Even if they had said hacking I would consider that a stretch. Its not like every kiddy is a script kiddy.

Well.. duh.. but seriously, it's wild out there.

[smeenz]

The finding doesn't surpise me much. As far as I'm concerned, a wireless lan should be considered at least as dangerous as your internet connection, and should be firewalled appropriately. What makes them more dangerous is that it's like having your users sit in your DMZ.. their laptops with wireless cards can be wide open and they don't have a clue. I guess it's just like when those users use a dialup modem account without a firewall, but because they're often connected to the corporate network via a vpn etc, they believe they are somehow more secure. They might well have a ipsec or mppe vpn active, but that doesn't usually stop windows from listening on ports 137/138/445. And how many windows users do you really think are going to run a 'personal' firewall and/or understand what they've got themselves into by going wireless.

Re:One day /. will implode

[chunkwhite86]

The PATRIOT act is used to define SPAM as terrorism.

I hope so... If we start hunting down spammers with the same tenacity as if they were terrorists... we'd all be better off.