Lack of Security

  • Thread starter Thread starter Der Alta
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Der Alta

Der Alta

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So I'm at a consultants office. Reviewing a set foundation plans. Apparently his dimensioning and mine didn't jive by 5/8". So we spent 45 minutes fighting through the set-up figuring out where the lost distance was.

After all that, we confirmed that the software was rounding 1/16ths off to 1/8ths and once reset, it all jived. Easy enough. Now to load the drawings from my laptop to his network. Simple, whip out the 64meg USB flash drive and plug it in. Except he's using a half assed version of 98SE. No luck.

So as a last resort, I pull out my wireless card and pulg it in. A quick site survey, and there are two unsecured networks in his building. I plop the drawings into an e-mail and fire them out through someone elses network and they drop right into his e-mail. Voila!

Two, wide open wirelss access points. In this 14 unit office complex, there are two. In my office building, there are 4 wireless networks. One is hidden, one is WEP and the other two are wide open. My apartment building, there are two. Mine is secured via WEP the other is wide open. In my friends apartment, there are three. One is secure, the other two are open.

Why is it that with all this talk about security, and viruses and world wide web hysterics, there are so many wide open access points? Are people really that dumb? Or are they just oblivious? Is that just my area that is less than smart about access points, or have others noticed this issue?

This is my rant of the day. My other rant is less pleasent as it's about the golden road to hell and good intentions. Friggin people.

AO
 
With my pocket PC with Bluetooth and WLAN I was in a car and picked up many open access points. But this was a residential neighborhood so they wouldn't know any better.
 
Most people don't know how to telnet or http into their router to turn on wep, or God forbid, do a firmware upgrade. I live in a townhouse complex, and there are 4 unsecured networks I could access. I have wep plus mac address filtering. My school uses wep as well, but I can pick up 1 or 2 unsecured networks from across the street.

I wouldn't need to subscribe to cable internet access if I wasn't such an upstanding citizen!
 
Funny little story my dad (who works as a computer tech) told me the other day. He was setting things up at a private home and the owner was talking about his cable ISP (on a wireless network) and how expensive it was per month. He said that his neighbor gets almost the same speed, and pays less for DSL. He constantly brags about the speed, and how cheap it is. (I don't know all the technical terms here but..) It turns out that his neighbor (the guy who pays for DSL) was getting such fast speeds because he was picking up the connection from his neighbors wireless cable connection. :lol:
 
I've got my network secured with 128-bit WEP encryption.

Truthfully I've been tempted to take the flattop around walking and see what I could find, but I wouldn't really know what to look for. I know from in my house I don't see anybody else's networks. However, my neighbors on all three sides are pretty old and probably don't even have computers, let alone wireless networks.
 
I've done a local survey with my laptop. Basically with our house layout, you can't get connectivity in anyone else's house or garden. Any my network is secured.

I think that the trouble with most people is that WEP is quite involved to set up, and as soon as they hit a snag, they pull out all of the security.
 
i dont think many people have wireless networks here, though it would be handy to have wireless cable interent next door :p
 
At home my wireless is wep encrypted, Mac filtered, it doesn't broadcast the SSID (which has been changed) and i've changed the password. Everyone who asks me about wireless routers at work, I will always tell them to keep the damn thing locked down with those measures if they get one. At work we have cisco access points running LEAP which needs a valid domain account to authenticate get an ip address. Although i've noticed one or two unsecure wireless connections, probably hooked up to production systems and another odd one that seems to be labeled demonstration something, one day I should try them out.
 
Two of my neighbors have wireless. Only one secured it by hiding the SSID. My brother was freaking out at me when he saw the open connection after buying his laptop since he thought it was mine. Of course, I've got mine set up to block mac addresses, run wep keys, and hide the SSID. Nobody is going to get in without my permission :).

Either way, I know that if my dsl service dies down for some reason, I can log into my neighbor's netork and even go so far as set up port forwarding to myself if I need it :p. The sad thing is that I've mentioned to them before that they're not protected and that they should set up at least something.

In my townhouse complex, there should be at least 4 or 5 more wireless networks because most of the neighbors have kids in high school or around my age.
 
Funnily enough, I just recieved the latest 2600 the other day, and one of the longer articles had to do with WiFi security. It's very interesting stuff.
 
I guess once you're a mod you can stop worrying about such mundane things as keeping your job, making your bank account last to the end of the month, and being able to make that car payment or whatever.

Your solution; move to Spain. DSL is fairly new here, and there are no worries about Internet security, since 96% of the population is computer-illiterate. They still think in terms of (check this) deleting files so the computer will run faster. Anyway, this is my answer to the rant. I have no clue what you're talking about.

I guess it's the language barrier :dopey:
 
man, i found 2 wireless networks in my condo. i haven't checked if they are open or not.

i cant even figure out how to acces my uncle's wireless connection. his is WEP though.
 
Diego440
I guess once you're a mod you can stop worrying about such mundane things as keeping your job, making your bank account last to the end of the month, and being able to make that car payment or whatever.

Your solution; move to Spain. DSL is fairly new here, and there are no worries about Internet security, since 96% of the population is computer-illiterate. They still think in terms of (check this) deleting files so the computer will run faster. Anyway, this is my answer to the rant. I have no clue what you're talking about.

I guess it's the language barrier :dopey:
Click to expand...
Are you suggesting that I'm more worried about an open wireless connection, than I am about keeping my job, finishing a multimillion condo complex, or where my wife was last night, and how much money I do spend on a car payment?

I'm simply amazed that with the amount of connections and access to the internet, with the raving about viruses, hacking, spyware, and fishing, that there are still offices with wide open wireless connections.

The real kicker is this isn't a backwoods office, with a 5 mile dirt road to it, or off the beaten path. It's 2 miles North (on Rte 1) from Foxboro Stadium. :odd:

AO
 

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