Beware the Airport Wireless

schwit1 writes to tell us that a recent study by a Silicon Valley-based security company shows that black-hats have been ramping up their use of tempting free or unsecured wireless access points in high travel areas like airports and hotels. "According to their study, even the 'secure' networks weren't all too safe. Eighty percent of the private Wi-Fi networks at airports surveyed by Airtight were secured by the aging Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, which was cracked back in 2001. Almost as many — 77 percent — of the networks they surveyed were actually private, peer-to-peer networks, meaning they weren't official hotspots. Instead, they were running off someone else's computer."

Comments

Re:Old

[girlintraining]

I think it's more ignorance. Of a fairly technical issue, at least for most people. A little bit of self-defensiveness there, I'm far less computer literate than most /. users and had no idea that WEP had been broken for 8 years.

Your education is your responsibility. It's assumed that if you're installing a wifi router, you will do your homework on how to set it up and read all the included documentation. Failing that, simply googling for "wifi router security FAQ" would provide this same information in short order. You're the owner and operator of that piece of equipment -- if you don't feel you can manage its installation and maintenance, hire someone who can. It's the same with anything else -- like your car. If your brakes go out because you didn't maintain them and you crash into another vehicle, you have only yourself to blame. It's not any different just because something's electronic.