Home WiFi Network Security Failings Exposed

An anonymous reader writes "The shocking state of home wireless (Wi-Fi) network security in the UK has been revealed by a life assistance company study. CPP used an 'ethical hacker,' Jason Hart, to test thousands of Wi-Fi networks across six UK cities, including London. He found that many didn't even have a password and roughly half of home UK Wi-Fi networks could be hacked in less than 5 seconds."

Comments

Re:No password WiFi == unsecured

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confusing "unsecured" with "insecure". They do not mean the same thing.

Unsecured WIFI means you have no password..

Just because it's intentionally unsecured doesn't mean it's not unsecured.

Umm, no.

[schon]

My Wi-Fi has no password, and that's a purposeful choice.

Which doesn't mean it's not unsecured. It just means that it's unsecured on purpose.

Supposed you have a bicycle. You chain it to a lamppost. It is now secured.
Supposed you take the same bicycle and decide purposely to not chain it to anything. Just because you decided not to chain it doesn't make it magically secured. It's still unsecured, you just made the decision not to secure it.

Not Shocking

[timeOday]

I hate the alarming tone of these passe "war driving" articles. A car or home can be broken into in 5 seconds by breaking a window. Most mailboxes where I live (including mine) are just boxes with a little non-locking door on the front that anybody can open.

And yet, the world keeps on turning.

Hopping onto somebody's wifi doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean you can get their personal documents, or banking info, or anything else.

Re:Not Shocking

[Nidi62]

Hopping onto somebody's wifi doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean you can get their personal documents, or banking info, or anything else.

But you CAN download music on their network and ruin them for life if the RIAA/MPAA finds out.