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Study: Wi-Fi users Still Don't Encrypt

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the won't-you-come-on-in dept.

Shackleford writes "SecurityFocus has an article saying that two days of electronic eavesdropping at the 802.11 Planet Expo in Boston last week sniffed out more evidence that most Wi-Fi users still aren't securing their networks. Security vendor AirDefense set up two of its commercial 'AirDefense Guard' sensors at opposite corners of the exhibit hall at the Boston World Trade Center, the site of the conference, and for two days analyzed the traffic flowing between conference-goers and 141 unencrypted access points set up by the conference for public use, and by vendors on the floor. What they found was that users checking their e-mail through unencrypted POP connections vastly outnumbered those using a VPN or another encrypted tunnel. Only three percent of e-mail downloads were encrypted on the first day of the conference, 12 percent on the second day."

4 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. WEP is weak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    First post through my neighbor's compromised WAP gateway. Off to view some porn now. :-)

    1. Re:WEP is weak by Golias · · Score: 4, Funny
      Humour aside, probabky won't be long before we have spam wagons. Spammers in converted trucks crusing the highways to find wireless access points for spamming.

      That would be awesome! It would mean that once in a while, an actual spammer would be parked out in front of my house, so they would be in close enough proximity for me to run out and beat the living shit out of them.

      Please spammers, I'm begging you. Try this tactic.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  2. At least ... by Gendhil · · Score: 4, Funny

    9% of attendees learned something from the expo. :)

  3. Arriving clue by HBI · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it possible that most people don't give a shit about encrypting their e-mail because the contents of their e-mail are so inane and you can't trust the intervening steps?

    I mean really - if I want secure transfer of information i'm not going to use e-mail. The effort wasted securing it is truly wasted effort, in my view, because of the lack of a trusted MTA. I don't trust my ISP. They can read this shit. So can every other transit point. Do you? Don't you feel somewhat foolish for admitting that?

    I secure my IM. End-to-end encryption at least has a point there.

    That being said, the article seems to lack point - expecting 'more people' to do something that is fundamentally pointless.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.