Wireless Security still lacking in mumbai, Survey Report

Deloitte has done a survey of Wireless devices
in Mumbai and wow the results are still alarming for the law
enforcement agencies even after the shocking terror activities. People
are just not willing to secure their wireless devices with WEP or WPA.

The key findings for the survey are:
1) Of the 6729 wireless networks seen, 36% appeared to be unprotected i.e. without any encryption,
2) 52% were using low level of protection i.e. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption.
3) Balance 12% were using the more secure Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).
4) This makes 88 % of the observed wireless networks relatively easy to compromise.

There
is a lot more to be done in mumbai because I remember going wardriving
around the city a few years back and got so many open wireless
connections that there was no need to buy internet connection at home
just sit in the car and do your stuff.

This is surely a
challenge for the law enforcement agencies, The ISP's should educate
users to secure their Wifi connections and there has to be a regular
audit from the ISP side to make sure the wireless devices in their
networks are using some sort of authentication. We can always argue
that even WEP can be cracked in a few hours and the same holds true for
WPA and WPA/2 which was recently cracked up to the speed boost of
10,000 times with the use of Nvidia Graphics card.

It is a
challenge to make all the wifi owners to fix their wireless devices but
with the proper help from ISP it should become easier but it is a task
government needs to take up.

-Abhiz

Powered by ScribeFire.

Another reason to secure your Wifi

Indian police investigating bomb blasts which killed 42 people traced an email claiming responsibility to a Mumbai apartment, they immediately raided the apartment in which a American national was staying.But after through investigation the police came to a conclusion that the American national was not the one who send that email but his Internet Connection was used to pass on the information, He had an Open Wifi connection without any Encryption and the range of the Wifi was accessible at quite good distance.Now the American was not involved but the terrorists used his open wifi connection and sent an email and he got in trouble. This is just another reason you should secure your PC as well as your Internet infrastructure because the moron's are getting smarter. 1) They used open wifi to send an email 2) they used microchips in the bombs that they planted in surat (good that the microchips were faulty and failed).What should people do to secure their Wifi ?1) First log everything at the router level, email the logs periodically to a email address to keep as backup.2) Use Encryption, WEP or WPA - WEP is quite easy to crack so I would recommend using WPA.3) Change default passwords immediately as soon as the technical support guy leaves your house.4) Switch off the router/modem when not in use.5) Monitor your internet bills because a unusual spike is a clear indication of misuse of your internet.6) Configuring MAC Address Filtering in your Modem/router so that only your machine gets connected to internet.7) If you use only 1 machine for Wifi reduce the DHCP address pool lease so that only one machine is connected to the internet at a time, or better of use static IP Address.One more thing i would like to add is the modem/router installation team of the ISP should take the lead and stop people from using Open Wifi and WEP, they should assist them in setting up WPA because its not just hackers or neighbors stealing your wifi connection even the very bad can use it for their bad deeds and you are innocent but can still end up in trouble like the American national.

-Abhiz