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Queensland Police to Look For Unsecured WiFi Spots
OzPeter writes "As a part of National Consumer Fraud week, the Queensland Police are going war driving in order to identify insecure WiFi setups. From the press release: 'The War Driving Project involves police conducting proactive patrols of residential and commercial areas to identify unprotected connections. Police will follow this up with a letterbox drop in the targeted area with information on how to effectively secure your connection.' While some people may like having an open WiFi AP its interesting to see that the Police also feel that 'Having WEP encryption is like using a closed screen door as your sole means of security at home. The WPA or WPA2 security encryption is certainly what we would recommend as it offers a high degree of protection.'"
Merely 15 years ago I was doing the exact same thing and have been, on umpteen occasions, questioned, detained, given a 'move on' notice or just generally harassed.
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I have an open Wifi setup. My attitude is that connectivity has become basic infrastructure, and all "lock it down" freaks have just bought into the agenda of ISPs who don't want us to share bandwidth to boost their own profits.
If you're a guest in my home, you're welcome to use the bandwidth, along with the lights and water. Can you imagine visitig a friend only to be told, "Look, here's the PIN code to unlock the lights, and here's the key in case you want to wash your hands." Ridiculous. I accept that there's a risk of someone lurking in their car outside the property boundary to leech off my internet connection, but there's a risk of someone stealing water from my outside, unprotected taps, too. OTOH, if bandwidth were shared freely everywhere there'd be no need to sneak around "stealing" it, would there?
It's the 21st Century, man. Get over it!
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
Plus, it's easier for them to book you for thought crimes they catch you committing via their IP taps. They'll have none of that "but my wifi is open -- it could have been anyone" defense. That won't work for you, sir, you'll be held accountable for whatever flows through your pipes!
This looks like a money grab from this years' budget
The QPS is always complaining that they do not have enough funding to pay their staff. Now they are wasting precious manhours to mine data that they could easily purchase (or even receive for free) from Google.
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NSW police may be interested in my wifi ssid "Police_Surveillance_Van_71A"
Insecure WiFi != Insecure network.
At home I have two WiFi network over the same AP, one is open an the other use WPA2, they are in independent networks and with a firewall between both, plus the open is capped to use at max 2mbps.
As far as I know WPA/WPA2 isn't broken, only WPS's PIN mode (enter an easy 8 digit number instead of a complicated alphanumeric passphrase). Granted you can still bruteforce the PSK itself instead of the PIN but then you've just got the same problem of weak passwords that many other things do.
WPA and WPA2 isn't broken. There's only a configuration problem in WPS (a system designed to bypass having to enter a WPA key, who thought that was a good idea anyway?). Even that isn't broken as such. The effect is that the brute force attack has been simplified to the point where it is achievable to actually perform rather than having to brute force the entire array of usable keys. A simple configuration change that either fixes the problem or better yet limits the number of tries or the rate of tries for connecting using WPS would instantly make it secure again.
The irony? Older access points which support WPA and WPA2 but don't support WPS are quite secure.
The double irony? I have never had WPS actually work on my access point even when the PIN is known, so I'm amazed that this is a suitable attack vector in the first place.
All of them named Linksys, Dlink, Wireless, etc... and all to a single router that is connected to nothing at all.
It significantly reduces the volume of idiot neighbors that do not configure their new wireless as many times they will connect to me instead.
Works great, when I shut it off, I see no more default router names.
It also screws with the wardrivers, I look at some of the maps every few months and see my location with a giant pile of AP names around my building.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.