'War Biking' San Francisco Reveals Lousy Wi-Fi Security

[Guest]

Using a specially equipped bicycle, security researchers mapped San Francisco's Wi-Fi networks and found lots of lamentable security.

'War Biking' San Francisco Reveals Lousy Wi-Fi Security : Read more

 

[Darkk]

This really didn't surprise me as most people aren't tech savvy enough to know how to secure their wi-fi router. All they care about is plug it in and make it easy to connect. They don't realize the legal implications when some criminal use their connection to conduct illegal activities.

 

[weatherdude]

It's unfortunate that many people care little about the security of their tech devices. The conecept of it being a serious risk is simply not there and there's little that can be done other than public education. This is a novice question but is it actually safe to use HTTPS and VPN's on an unsecured Wi-Fi?

 

[jasonelmore]

All this guy is using is a Raspberry PI running PwnPi running on a iAnker 12,000 Mah External Battery. Using the GPIO interface for his lcd screen on the handlebar.Anyone can do this fairly easy.

 

[renaisuru]

i thought San Fran had free wifi for the entire city... so this would make the test irrelevant and stupid? biased in any way? btw sophos sucks.

 

[blackened144]

We've come a long way since I last war dialed. You can do that now on a bike too..

 

[rpmrush]

I use Mac Address filtering. Annoying for new people in the house, but it's a fortress AFAIK.

 

[rpmrush]

To that...Mac address filtering looks like an open WIFI connection until you attempt to connect. I wonder how many unsecured were actually filtered.

 

[Camikazi]

I use Mac Address filtering. Annoying for new people in the house, but it's a fortress AFAIK.

You can find out what MAC addresses are whitelisted on a router rather easily, it is in no way good security alone. Using MAC filtering plus adding in WPA2 or another encryption with a strong password is much more secure though, but like I said the filtering alone is rather easy to bypass.

 

[itsnotmeitsyou]

The thing about open wifi, whether you are limiting MAC address connections or not, you are still transmitting your data unencrypted. Yeah, you might gain a single ms of reduced latency avoiding encryption, but I anyone can watch what you're watching if it is unencrypted. Fortunately for your bank account those pages are all typically SSL encrypted to begin with. Get some WPA up at least.

 

[jomalia]

This is crap!!! how the iphone with a 8mp camera is the best? what a stupid review, this must be a joke