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Sydney Has 10,000 Unsecured Wi-Fi Points
daria42 writes "A bunch of researchers have been driving around Sydney, Australia, and scanning for unsecured Wi-Fi networks. You'd think that in this day and age, with all that we've learned about security, that Wi-Fi security would be almost universal ... but the truth is that about 2.6 percent don't even have basic password protection. Extrapolating a little, that adds up to 10,000 unsecured Wi-Fi networks across Sydney alone."
No wonder they implemented a filter!
This 'bunch of researchers' wasn't Google was it?
.. .providing a nice free service for their customers? heck, I even use the free unsecured internet access on the bus these days!
But how many of these are intended to be public access points?
Honestly I don't think this will come as a shock to ANYONE who has a wifi enabled device. There are unsecured access points everywhere in any given metropolitan space. I can get wifi reception in most places of three forks montana, a town with a population of less than 2000!
We'll probably have 10,000 or more when done. The goal is to have a complete coverage network, I'm talking everywhere, no drops. The building I work in has a couple hundred (we actually found a bug in old Intel wireless drivers, they couldn't handle over 99 visible APs). Every one has an unsecured network on it. The reason is we wish to provide visitors and guests with an easy way to get on the Internet. It is limited, web only, speed filters and so on, but it is open. The same APs also have secured networks on them, there is a WPA2-Enterprise network that you can access with your campus login and password that then has no speed or port restrictions, but of course you need a campus login. There is a VoIP network too (the reason for total coverage) but it is just for testing at this point.
It has nothing to do with being unaware of security, everything to do with not being assholes. A PSK security system would be worthless. It would be an unadministratable nightmare to try and change the password often enough and distribute it to do any good. Enterprise security works great for students, employees, and so on but isn't very helpful when you are talking guests, or just the public who wants to use our facilities (and we are a public institution and so have a duty to them). So open is the answer. You get on, it directs you to a "You agree to this shit," page, and away you go.
Some of those might be intentional: I run an unencrypted wifi AP which is
bandwidth limited and routed through Tor as a public service. It is used regularly.
Also not covered will be those with open APs but additional authentification/encryption
layers, e.g. using a VPN.
Around here (not Australia, admittedly), open wifi is nearly non-existent (and all open
ones I've encountered over the last two years or so seem to fall into the categories above) -
WEP "secured" APs are another story however, there is still a worrying number of those around.
And I'm certain most WEP users are entirely unaware of their de-facto openness.
Two things: - Even with encryption such as WPA/WPA2 the wireless networks are not secure unless the password is frequently changed, say, once a day or so. - At 100 meters range, given the right environment, you would be able to detect the signal from a wireless transmitter using a built-in laptop antenna. However, if the cracker would invest in a more powerful antenna, the antenna could be placed even further away from the transmitter and still be able to catch the signal. "And that kids, is why wireless networks are not safe."
Sorry, I'm just not seeing how this would be news to anyone technically adept enough to be interested in reading slashdot. Unsecured wifi is a problem in every part of the world, from third world countries just learning to use it to the most advanced countries. Ten thousand is a big number, but it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
So what? If you use an insecure connection you know you are vulnerable to people who like to read your email and see what websites you visit. And the owner of the connection risks getting all kinds of viruses for free, and people downloading pr0n and other stuff via her network. Who else but the two people I mentioned should care?
-- Cheers!
Maybe they all 10,000 residents read Bruce Schneier's blog:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html
Also, I know TFA mentions "Residential Locations", but I wonder if there were any coffee shops dotted around which offer free wifi. Maybe none, but a short sentence in the article would help me sleep at night :)
As an Australian I am quite surprised that the number is so high. Here it has been the norm for ISPs to tiered monthly data plans where you pay for how much you use. From cheap plans for $20/mo for a few GB aimed at old people who only forward on chain emails from 1997 right to 1TB plans for torrenting all that public domain and Creative Commons content. Once it's used up your connection is throttled to an unusable 64kb/s for the remainder of the month (though some ISPs sell data recharge things).
Unlike Americas "unlimited" one-size-fits-all these users are losing what they paid for. Why would people be so stupid as to let their neighbours use up their 25GB on their shitty Telstra plan? Is setting up WPA2 really that difficult? Can these people read an instruction manual?
I also find it depressing that WPS even exists.
Unicode in Slashdot
I run a open access Wireless AP, the SSID is "free wifi" and it redirects traffic to a local rickroll/nyancat video loop (randomizes each time)
Wireless networks are not secure even with WPA/WPA2, unless you feel like changing the password every other day. Even my grandma is sharp enough to follow the instructions on various youtube-clips for cracking WPA/WPA2..
.. or maybe I'm just a paranoid fool for still using wires at home. :-p
It feels like all these wireless networks are just begging for someone to digging down a number of largers antennas/access-points around the city.. and start sniffing like crazy for passwords and credit card numbers.
There was a time when most WiFi hotspots were password-free and we could connect to the internet for free in most urban areas when we were travelling, with latencies and speeds that put 3G to shame.
Now, those times are gone forever. No more free internet for the casual user. No more sharing and love.
People like to talk about security but it's bullshit. We are not the winners in this ordeal. ISPs are. The security issues have an easy technical solution: The same one used by french ISPs to let its customers connect to other customer's WiFi.
They have a password-free Hotspot that sends you to web login and a separated, bandwidth-shaped VLAN for guests so they can't access network shares or do anything else.
R.I.P free WiFi. You will be missed.
But how many of those 2.6% have MAC address filtering? No password, but if you try to connect it won't work. You're not encrypted, so your packets can still be sniffed. But if you just want to stop casual users logging on and stealing your bandwidth it's a perfectly acceptable solution.
I had a spare AP, so I decided to leave it open for the public to make use of my internet during the day. The AP is on a manual time switch (you know, the one that plugs into the wall) so it switches the AP on at 8am, switches off at 5. Real technical stuff I know but seriously, what's the deal with all the press surrounding unsecured wifi nextworks? Is it still 2005? Even if people have encryption or mac address filtering, it's not going to make the world of difference? If someone wants something other than internet, I'm pretty sure 9/10 of those people know how to crack a wifi password or spoof an mac address. I think the important question is, how many people leave the default router password as the same? or how many un-patched windows/mac pc's are sitting behind that router?
I really doubt the number cited here. Having travelled to Sydney many times on business, I can say clearly that open wireless is hard if not impossible to find. What's probably happening is that the access point has no password, but to access the internet, a login page needs to be used. Invariably, these are pay for services.
Note that it seems in Australia, sites require a user to accept T&C's before using the network, specifically stating they won't use it for downloading Child Pornography. As such, the direction seems very much to use captive portals, rather than just username / password logins.
Plausible deniability.
So, evidently, Sydney has too many secured wifi points, right? 2.6% unsecured is less than the percentage of people with no financial information or anything interesting enough to steal... grandparents who don't do banking online are buying wireless laptops. Possibly, 2.6% of Sydney wifi administrators are confident of their ability to monitor access to their networks. If the ISPs take over the anti-virus implementation, as they are starting to do in the USA, the only problem would be lost business to the ISPs.
Hmmm.
Gently reply
I know all about security an I leave my network unprotected, on purpose, so other people can use it if necessary. If you know about security, then you also probably know that setting passwords on wifi won't guarantee you security anyway. Anything you want to e secure should be done over ssl, ssh, or VPN.
Another thing to mention, even if you use Ethernet, your data can be sniffed off the network as soon as it hits the ISP anyway if its not encrypted.
LAWSUIT!!!
Boredom is bliss.
I would say Buenos Aires probably has ten times that many unsecured wifi spots and we are actually proud of it.
I'm all for security and strong passwords and all that, but so far, no one has been able to give me a good enough reason for me to bother with "securing" my wireless network.
People can sniff your passwords! -- I don't send them in the clear; I use SSH and SSL for everything.
You'll get viruses! -- I don't trust my network; I treat it as part of the public Internet and use sensible firewall settings.
People will use your bandwidth! -- I don't care. My bandwidth isn't capped.
People will use your connection for child porn and you'll be sent to Gitmo! -- This is the only argument I've heard that has at least some semblance of relevance. It's still pretty weak, though. If it were true, cafes, hotels and similar establishments would find themselves in hot water all the time and I have never heard of such a case.
What else is there?
So only 10,000 follow Bruce Schneier's advice:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html
FTA: "In total, 382 networks were detected with 2.6 per cent operating without password protection."
So, out of all the networks they tested, only 9 networks we unsecured? I don't think this small a pool is very significant statistically. There could be a number of reasons for those 9 people to be operating a wifi without a password. It isn't necessarily just being "uninformed"
My mother has 10,000 unsecured wifi networks. Big whoop.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
I choose to leave my wireless open. I view wireless "security" like this: 1) Write a secret message on a plain postcard. 2) Put it in to a safe. 3) Drive the safe to the post office. 4) Take the postcard out of the safe, give the post office people the postcard. 5) Postcard is now sent through the postal service. Now, the postcard transport to the post office IS secure, it's in a safe, nobody can read it, it's all good and super secure. The security breaks somewhat when the postcard is delivered to the post office, just like your "secure" wireless data connection is somewhat broken when it reaches the Internet, but.. people seem to like this kind of security. If you really want security then you need end-to-end encryption like SSL and https. My view is that thinking wireless "security" gives you much real security is just dump. It does prevent people from using your wireless, and that's about it. I don't mind, fetching a web page used close to zero percent of my bandwidth anyway.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Just because they were "open" doesn't mean you could actually do anything with them.
I used to have a wireless network where all the clients were software-firewalled and the only traffic accepted over the wireless interfaces was VPN traffic to a server also on the wireless network (and that interface similarly firewalled). Hell, you didn't even have DHCP service on that interface.
So a million people could "join" my wireless network but:
1) None of them could talk to each other.
2) None of them could talk to the Internet.
3) None of them could talk to my computers.
4) None of the traffic they could potentially sniff with a "promiscuous" sniff of the network was at all useful or revealing to them.
But it meant that the wireless negotiation was quick and easy (I've had no end of problems with WPA2 gear just dropping off the network when a WPA, WEP, or open network on the same hardware works just fine all the time), nobody had to remember silly passwords, I could use client-keys long before WPA allowed you to do such things and it was impossible to make me join an "alternate" network with the same SSID and pretend to be my home network.
Just because there was no WEP/WPA password doesn't mean there was no security, or that it wasn't intentional (e.g. public wifi access points), or that it even connected to another computer at all - let alone the Internet. I'm not saying that there weren't people with stupidly insecure connections but a scary number means nothing without justification:
How many of the "secure" stations actually had quite a weak password (e.g. same as the SSID?)?
How many of the insecure stations would route to the unmodified Internet at all (upside-down-ternet actually gives you scripts to mess with people who access your wifi without the right credentials - like turning web images upside down, or redirecting them to pictures of kittens)?
How many of them would let you connect but would only allow access to a single MAC (which isn't "secure" as such, but a damn sight better than nothing)?
How many of them were actually fake honeypots deployed to catch people's details because they were stupid enough to log in on unknown, insecure networks?
Scary numbers sell headlines. I'd want facts, considering that for many years I didn't trust WEP or WPA with my networks and so only deployed them as a hindrance to eavesdroppers, not an actual security layer - because everything was VPN and treated as an "unsecured" connection. People who came to my house could never work out why, when they connected with the advertised password (if any), they couldn't actually do anything even once connected.
Networking is not a resource to be conserved, it's value increases the more it is used, in contrast to most things in human experience.
RAH
It isn't about not wanting to be nice, nowadays when police kick the door down first and ask questions later you don't want to be in a position where the local pervert has an easy route to browse his kiddie porn through YOUR network. Even if you can later prove it wasn't you the hassle and trouble involved is just not worth the risk. Even when most use crap security there generally is no point to breaking it as there is nearly always some other moron that leaves theres open. Even from my living room where I am typing this I can see 11 AP's, 2 of which are completely open.
in any big city, try NYC or LA, or Detroit or Chicago, or any of the other big US Cities = full of inept people that bought PCs & laptops all connected via unsecured wifi because it is easier than running Ethernet cable all over the house
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Nono, I understand but since I live in Thailand (and not in the US), they've pretty much blocked everything already! Plus, even in Thailand, they do a little bit of investigation before actually throwing someone to the ground and hand cuffing them!
Computer Hackers Running Rampant Ruse of Running Runtimes
On online newspaper has broken the story that the majority of computer terrorism happens because of downloading executables and running them. "This results in the innocent user being asked why they were running TransvestiteIslamicHookers.avi.exe."
An internet security expert from PMITA University in Melbourne, Greg Markovy, said downloading executables could attract attacks on any devices on the same network, leading to the loss of personal data, such as bank statements and credit card numbers. ''The likelihood that the executable will be used by someone else is high,'' he said. Hackers can turn home computers into robots, using them to send spam and attack other computers."
Nicolas Awhole, a law lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, said that if an unauthorised user illegally downloaded copyrighted material, it could be traced back to the network owner. ''It could be quite difficult to prove that it wasn't in fact you,'' Dr Awhole said.
Dr Awhole gave one final reminder: "Remember, anyone at any time can accuse you of anything, write hate speech on your wall, send an envelope with your return address, or hack into your computer. It's up to you to prove your innocence."
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Yeah, I've been trying to get funding for my research project: finding unsecured Wi-Fi access points in pubs and bars.
Here's my budget:
Equipment: $300
Beer: $50,000
Gas: $0
To cut costs, we were planning on stag...walking from bar to pub.
It's tough out there! Can't get any funding!
I refuse to live in a world where Americans need "your papers please" or where our police are thugs. I refuse to be bullied by the TSA. It is our choice what world we wish to live in. If you give in, you give up; That way lies fear, depression, and death. I live in the same bright world that Ronald Reagan spoke of, a city on a hill....
I wonder how many of them are Free Public WiFi.
Is the Wi-Fi unsecured or open?
Is the land preserved or undeveloped?
The wording itself automatically influencing opinions before the conversation even begins.
What Slashdot users know != what the general public knows.
"You'd think that in this day and age, with all that we've learned about security, that Wi-Fi security would be almost universal" ...Who's "we"? IT nerds? Or people from other professions, jobs, and have different interests in life?
So what you're telling me is, over 97% of users secure their wifi networks?
Honestly I never would have thought we could get the percentage that high. That's good news.
Sigs are awesome huh?
WPA has no structural flaws.
Not quite correct, there is this little thing called; "Hole196", It is not a big flaw, In terms of practical impact, But it is there :)
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot.
Isn't that a good thing?
Broadcasting a specific SSID from an AP that uses a captive portal and is routed out to the Internet and firewalled from other networks is not "insecure". Article is absolutely meaningless.
Seriously, it's like an unsecured AP with more consumer confidence. It takes 15 mins. at most on decent hardware to crack WEP.
The sad thing is that most ISPs don't make WPA readily available to their customers.
Don't serve the copyright cartel by fretting over unsecured wireless. It's such a waste of energy and material to make all those extra systems, and all our brains get fried because someone somewhere may possibly some day by accident eventually we don't know when but you can never be to sure..
You can be to sure. piss off with secured wireless.
Here in the US, I run an open access point on a DMZ with some traffic and speed restrictions. I run it for the convenience of my friends and guests. I'm no attorney, but we still prosecute the people who commit crimes, not the owners of the stuff used to commit the crime.
Why is it my responsibility to police the activity of others "trespassing" on my property? If a criminal is running through my back yard is it my responsibility to tackle him or shoot him? If a bad guy steals my car and uses it to rob a bank, or run someone over, am I responsible for the consequences?
Any reasonable person would say the perpetrator of the crime is responsible for the consequences of committing that crime.
By leaving my property, my access point, open for the convenience of others, what crime have I committed? I say none. Any other law holding ME responsible for the crimes of OTHERS is unjust.
-ted
My open AP sits on a segregated subnet. It is also running a captive portal. If you need to get into my private network, you must use a VPN client. If you want to browse freely on the Internet, you must authenticate to the captive portal.
They are shipping routers that have encryption turned off by default. And the routers have WEP as an option. The manufacturers could ship all their routers with WPA-2 and a randomized password that is shipped separately in the box. But they dont.
What is one that allows you to segregate the wired from the wireless so they cannot talk to one another. I would like a wireless router that: The wireless can only access the wan. Do any of them do that? Extra points for a router that can only be administered via the wire.
I miss the good ol' days where you could fire up your device in a park or apartment complex or wherever and find an AP to connect to. Not any more.... You see a dozen APs, all locked down. End of an era...
The opening paragraph of TFA makes it clear that they're using "secure" as meaning to deny access to not-explicitly-authorized users. (Actually, not quite. They include another meaning too, which I'll get to.) The article isn't really talking about people who leave the root/admin password on the router to the default, or something like that.
From the Australian government's point of view, anonymous Internet access is highly undesirable so it's natural that they would try to spin that as "insecure." It's pretty sad that an Australian newspaper is playing ball, though.
In you look closely, though, you'll see that there's one other usage of "insecure."
That is, "insecure" means that your wifi is configured such that it increases the likelihood of getting threatening letters or visits from cops.
I live in a RV and have commercial Wi-Fi client mounted in my RV with a Yagi antenna on the roof where my TV antenna used to be.
My best connection distance to date is 2.3 miles from a ridge top campground in a state park to a KOA campground in the valley below.
In my travels around the country I have only been parked in a few places where I can not find at least one open access point to connect to.
In fact in my experience the smaller the city the better the likelihood of an in range open access point. Open access points are my connection to the outside world now.
But Hey, only 4,000 of them have the SSID of Linksys.....
Quite to the contrary. Now is when we must engage in civil disobediance. Right now it's "child porn". Next, it will be "racism" and then "terrorism" and finally "dissent"
What is much more important is the 2.6 percent. Sydney has 4.5 million people, so 10.000 seems like a low number to me. It would be interesting to see these numbers from other cities and/or countries.
Downside will be that the number 10.000 sounds like a lot and will be treated as such by the media.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Did they consider that many of these might just be hotspots that were intentionally left open? 2.5% doesn't strike me as an unreasonable percentage of people that intentionally leave their wifi open. It'd be relatively simple to modify the test procedure to attempt to connect to the networks and 1) see if they can lease an IP address, which would tell if they at least have MAC-based authentication enabled, and if they can get an IP 2) see if they get the expected text when trying to connect to a predetermined website, which would tell them if there's a captive portal operating. Both of those things could be seen as valid reasons for leaving wifi networks unencrypted, but I wouldn't necessarily call either of those scenarios an "open and unsecured" network.
For tonight's news we are going to bash the poor retards who can't seem to secure their APs because, you know, anyone could drive to your backyard and plant child pornography all over your drives and make your printers spit it out non-stop, God forbid!. Tomorrow there will be another slashstupidity about how we need more freedom and how to combat Big Money and Big Brother by using open proxies and stick it up the stablishment's ass and that leaving your AP open is mighty tech-cool, libertarian and fashionable. Oh, the humanity.
Newsworthy you ask?
This is a blatant slashvertisement for Australia's largest Wireless ISP, Linksys.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I choose to leave my wireless open. I view wireless "security" like this: 1) Write a secret message on a plain postcard. 2) Put it in to a safe. 3) Drive the safe to the post office. 4) Take the postcard out of the safe, give the post office people the postcard.
I got this far before I realised your view of security is horribly broken.
The point of WiFi security is to prevent others from using your wifi when you dont want them to. There are a few reasons for this,
1) control what gets put through your network.
2) prevent others from using your bandwidth, slowing your connection down.
3) Prevent others from consuming large chunks of your download cap (very prevalent in Oz).
Now how WPA works is.
1) put your postcard (packet) in a safe (encryption).
2) send that safe to the post office (router).
3) Authorised agent at the post office opens safe with the key you gave them. The post office carries out the instructions on the post card (NAT) on your behalf.
The whole point of this is to prevent anyone sending instructions to the router without your authorisation. This entire process is done completed the internet is even involved, NAT and firewalls on the router is security against internet based attacks, WPA is the defence against local attacks.
Do you now understand that wireless security is completely separate from gateway security and is not broken by it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In my area, if you drive around town then a lot of places show up as "Unsecured wireless network" but if you try to access the Internet through it, it redirects all traffic to one particular location that wants you to put in a username/password (which you have to have paid for via some other channel previously).
Just because it's not using WPA or WEP doesn't mean it's insecure. Many such networks use other end-to-end methods to secure data that needs to be secured, and invites the public in. This is especially common in Oregon, for example.
Furries make the internet go.