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Defcon "Warballoon" Finds 1/3 of Wireless Networks Unsecured
avatar4d writes "Networkworld is reporting about a warballooning operation (similar to wardriving) that was disallowed by the management at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, but was covertly launched anyway. The team found approximately 370 networks, and about a third of those were unsecured. In addition to that, the project managed to show how trusting the local law enforcement agencies really were: 'Near the end of the operation, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police cruiser drove by the parking lot to see what was going on. Hill and his team waved. The police officers waved back and drove off.'"
Will everybody please STFU about securing your wifi..
Cracking their wep when I'm on the road and without my gear is a pain in the ass!
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I don't believe this a good test of "security" since the majority of the hotels on the Strip have multiple unsecure Wifi networks for their guests. You have to go to a launch page first before you're even allowed access, sometimes entering a code.
If the police flip out over something we do, they're overreacting idiots that don't understand technology.
But if the police don't flip out over something we do, they're underreacting idiots who aren't keeping us safe.
Mmkay.
What else would the Police do with that situation? Is what the people were doing illegal?
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Last weekend I made a quick 5 mile drive and found 105 systems in my average residential neighborhood. 46 were unsecured. About 25 were running WEP.
Don't assume people's motives for having an open AP. Rather than security ignorance, altruism is a perfectly good reason to turn off WEP and WPA.
Oh now they're too trusting?!
What do you want?!
Should they have played hardball and interrogated them, maybe arrested them and confiscated their equipment until they could ascertain they were safe so you could have a post about "out of control" law enforcement again?
Perhaps they should've called out the bomb squads ala the Mooninites bomb scare?
I, for one, vastly prefer this response.
Actually, only 1/3 insecure sounds like a great improvement over just a few years ago.
Irongeek's Hacking Videos / Security Videos and Articles
802.11 APs that people refer to as being 'unsecured' are in fact broadcasting a beacon declaring them to be 'Open System'. It is right there in the spec, section 8.2.2.2 .
'Open System' means exactly that. Come on it. We're open.
This is a good thing. I don't secure my wireless LAN. I secure my computers. If people want to borrow a bit of my bandwidth, go right ahead. My neighbor does it all the time when he can't get his crappy cable internet to work.
This should be encouraged. Call them 'Open' and call it a good thing.
Evil people are out to get you.
Are there really people stupid enough to think that awareness of security holes is something new? Every major piece of infrastructure over the last century has had major security holes. But rather than gleefully exploiting and exposing them for personal fame and fortune, the people who figured it out just shut up about them. Why? Because they understood that fixing those holes would be costly and intrusive, and it would ultimately still not make the system really safe.
So, if you enjoy body cavity searches, universal surveillance cameras, automated defense systems, and dealing with proprietary and intrusive access controls everywhere you go electronically or physically, then go ahead and keep wardriving and warballooning and defconnning.
Just be aware that it is your actions that are bringing us the police state, because once a bunch of geeks stands up and says "hey, your infrastructure isn't secure and we are at risk", then politicians and lawmakers have to act.
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"That's the most pathetic complaint I've heard in a very long time. Go to North Korea, assholes, you can get your police state fix there."
That would be no fun without good connectivity. What good is a police state if I can't rant about it online?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
In addition to that, the project managed to show how trusting the local law enforcement agencies really were.
Why shouldn't they be? Why should people out in the open with laptops automatically be assumed to be criminals? No matter what they were doing, odds are the cops wouldn't have to technical knowledge to make a proper judgment anyway. Suppose these guys really were up to no good, and the cops questioned them about it. "We're just playing some network video games officer."
Or is the use of a portable computer in public now considered criminal behavior?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Most WiFi networks are of such low power to render them effectively useless beyond a few feet of the origin of the signal. In my neighborhood with houses on half-acre to acre lots I can detect half a dozen networks. A couple are 'insecure,' but the signal is one bar in strength. Besides, I'm detecting them with my own network, so why do I want to 'steal' their bandwidth? Mine is faster. There aren't many people who want to cruise the neighborhood looking for unsecured signals so they can use their laptop in the privacy of their own automobile to surf the net. How uncomfortable is that? I surf with my feet propped up, a beer on the table, and the dog curled up at my feet.
Then there are those networks that are intentionally unsecured. The local library has a router intentionally pointed at the parking lot (Gasp!) In the downtown area every hotel is within range of an unsecured network. They even have a placard that tells you how to connect--free!
Sure, there are probably guys into taking advantage of you if your network is unsecured. Perhaps the issue is more prevalent in an apartment house or a dorm than single family residences, but I think this is more of a theoretical issue than a practical one. You can hypothesize your way to wild conclusions, but in the end, is this REALLY a serious problem?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
...was Cory Doctorow in the balloon blogging? http://xkcd.com/239/
They were cool and casual, and did not run from the cops. If they had stared at the cruiser with that "OMG, we're busted" look, or even worse, run away; there might have been trouble. You hear stories like this all the time--the guy who gets pulled over for a warning about going 10 miles over the limit, and he's cool and the cop never finds out he's got joints in the glovebox. Then, on the other side there's the guy who's initially done nothing wrong and ends up getting his whole car searched by dogs, and getting detained for an hour just because he acted suspiciously.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"wtf are you talking about? korea has more fiber backbone than the US. Its government funded much so like land lines and telephone poles are here. I know a few korean gamers as well after playing gunz online a bit. Like the #1 fps I bet even more hacked/modded than quake."
You don't know the difference between North and South Korea.
Are you an American?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
.
and the next time the geek pulls some damn full stunt in Vegas will the cops be so warm and fuzzy?
Stories keep getting posted about the number of networks which are unsecured like it's some kind of problem. The vast majority of those networks are SUPPOSED to be unsecured. They're probably open networks designed for free public use - like the ones you get around New York parks which have been installed by Google or the hotpots in coffee shops such as Starbucks.
In the UK, all BT Openworld public access hotspots are unsecured as well. You can't actually use them though, unless you log in as they have an HTTP intercept until you log in.
Unless they can differentiate between intentionally open public hotspots in Starbucks (etc) and unsecured home access points in naive people's houses, then any figures are totally meaningless.