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Mumbai Police To Enforce Wi-Fi Security
caffeinemessiah writes "In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, the local police are going to be sniffing out unsecured wi-fi access points and ordering the owners to secure them. The article notes that 'terror mails were sent through unsecured Wi-Fi connections' before bomb blasts in other Indian cities. No word on if they'll be walking around using Kismet, or if people who use pathetically weak WEP encryption will be ordered to switch to more advanced protocols. Unfortunately, a gesture like this does not take into account the insidious scenario of walking into a cafe, buying a coffee and then (legally) using the cafe's wi-fi. Or the fact that terrorists might actually be able to pay to use a cybercafe, and know what VPNs are."
On the other hand, the Mumbai police may still be keeping track of the mandatory keyloggers that went into the area's cybercafes in 2007.
I honestly don't know. If this were in effect before the attack, what difference would it have made? I can't help but think "not a heck of a lot". Terror has a way of routing itself around obstacles. While it's good to have a secure network, should it be mandated?
Is a network "unsecure" if you intentionally keep it open? Does this outlaw sharing access then?
the insidious scenario of walking into a cafe, buying a coffee and then (legally) using the cafe's wi-fi
This is the first (and I hope the last) time I have heard such a scenario described as "insidious".
Calling it a "scare tactic" is a bit harsh. I'd say its more the police wanting something to point to when their bosses ask what they've done to "make Mumbai safe from this happening again".
Unless i'm at university I always leave my network unsecured. My neighbors use it on occasion (i check logs). And I use theirs on occasion, with us being on separate ISPs we get at least 5 9s of uptime. It frustrates me that secured is become standard or in this case enforced. It was much better a few years ago when i could get wireless access in most places to check emails and such. Why do have to have such a community of locked doors? If someone has a laptop they likely have their own wireless internet which you could use, it is a perfectly fair deal. If my neighbours did a few gigs a day i'd stop it but it never went over a few megs.
Standard security should not allow access to lan. It should be allowed to set limits for outsiders and should have a message redirect when you first open FF/IE/Opera saying the rules and so forth. Thats it. Making sharing and redundancy illegal is ridiculous and as the summary suggests it doesn't help anything.
You can't just walk into a cafe in Mumbai and use the wifi. You have to show a government ID (such as a passport), which is recorded, before you even get access credentials.
Exact. And since terrorists would NEVER steal a passport, it means that this will keep the children safe, and not at all only serve to mess with regular citizens while being a mere inconvenience for true criminal intents.
*sigh*
You can't take the sky from me...
Newsflash: Mumbai has 17 MILLION people. Granted at most 500,000 have computers.
But still the level of computer literacy in Mumbai in police force is complete joke. Hey, their government offices don't even have computers.
I think the most ridiculous thing is that there's countless MILLIONS starving on the streets and now they are going to equip police with laptops to chase after unprotected WiFi signals?
Didn't they get the memo a few months ago that even WPA2 was cracked with Nvidia CPU/GPUs?
What are they going to do, enforce people to implement breakable security? Where's the sense in that.
Indian stock market is down over 60%, I think the police should be focusing their efforts on preventing civil unrest. And government spending their money far more wisely. People are starving everywhere you look in Mumbai, not to say the same thing in just about every other Indian city.
But that's just my 2 cents.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
They want ppl to feel like they are doing something to help the nation. It is no different than when W has been saying that American airports, ports and harbors are secure. They are not. It is more work, but it is still possible to smuggle weapons on-board aircraft (in fact, far too easy). The same is true of Mumbai. Assume that these guys want to attack again. So what? They simply rig an encrypted wifi close by and then use it for themselves. VERY easy to do. In fact, they can even set up some systems where they are 5KM away and use an antenna to beam to the top of the hotel. From there, plug in various antenna's just prior to the attack. It is that simple.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You're right. Nobody should ever check IDs for anything because they can all be faked.
In fact, why even have laws? Terrorists can just go around shooting everybody anyway.