Wardriving Worries Residents

sphynx99 writes "This article describes how residents of an upscale neighborhood in Arizona are worried about wardriving, a "new method of privacy intrusion and identity theft". Nothing to worry about, though; "The Scottsdale Police Department plans to create a cyber-crimes unit next year."

Comments

Stupid people

[Anonymous Coward]

Heaven forbid they setup their networks properly and save taxpayers thousands upon thousands of dollars. Why be responsible when you can just whine to the government?

Re:Finally

[Izago909]

If you choose to live in a glass house, when blinds are cheap, you for-go the right to bitch about people looking in on you. An ounce of prevention goes a long way. Now, if a hacker breaks your encryption and your MAC filtering, then you can complain.

Re:In other news

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Better analogy yet:

The Scottsdale residents have UHF video cameras in their bedrooms, and are concerned with people driving around with portable UHF TV's and watching them have wild monkey sex.

Protecting against wardriving is as simple as not using wifi, if you're too stupid to secure it.

Re:Finally

[Fjornir]

I'm not so sure you're looking at this the right way... First though, I want to make it abundantly clear that my comment is only meant to apply to open wireless networks. That said, let's take a pretend CB radio session as an example. I tune into channel 7 and PigPen and the RubberDuck are talking back and forth about the Mt. St. Helens eruption. There's a pause in their conversation and I hop in and say, "PigPen, this here's the ManOnTheStreet, so tell me good buddy, what's on the frontpage of CNN right now?" and PigPen responds, "RubberDuck, she's just blowing more ash for a month or two. ManOnTheStreet, Tiger Woods just married hisself some hot lookin' swedish model, and man can you see her tits but good through that dress of hers!"

Obviously PigPen could have ignored me. Or told me to go check myself. There was no requirement he answer my query. Same goes for any transaction that happens on the public airwaves -- like the wireless networking bands. I'll go so far as to say that MAC spoofing, or hacking the WEP key is definately wrong... But unless an open network is considered to be open am I liable if my linksys wireless nic connects to your default-settings linksys wireless hub instead of my default-settings linksys wireless hub?

Re:In other news

[Chas]

Still better.

Scottsdale residents are actively broadcasting wild monkeysex. But want to arrest and sue anyone who actually looks at it.

If you open up your home and invite people in (and that's essentially what an unsecured wireless network IS), don't be surprised if they see something you wouldn't want them to see.

Now if they crack your WEP key, etc. THEN you have a right to bitch.

Otherwise STFU!

Educating the public.

[BorgCopyeditor]

It's occurred to me that if it really is simple enough to set up a secure wireless network, then that information ought to be easy enough to communicate. What is really the problem, then, is not that the good people of this town are "too stupid" to set these things up, but that no one has yet communicated to them effectively the message that they should care about securing their networks. This is really a matter of educating the public. Word of mouth would be a good start, and surely the manufacturers bear some responsibility, but I wonder if a few well-placed (and respectful) e-mails to local newspapers in this town could also help.

Just think, people don't really know how to fix their own cars, but they know enough to know what sorts of problems might crop up, and more importantly, enough to do what needs to be done to maintain their cars reasonably well within the limits of what they, as nonexperts, can do. The only reason people know this is that there has been a culture passed from one person to the next of this kind of practical knowledge. Maybe some geeks should do their part to help disseminate the (frankly not very extensive) knowledge necessary to secure home wireless networks.