cnet had an article last month reiterating the dangers of surfing the net via an unsecured wi-fi.
Many of you may have heard this before, but many still seem to not be doing anything about it. You should. Here's why. With a $50 wireless antenna and the right software a criminal hacker located outside your building as far as a mile away can capture passwords, e-mail messages, and any other data being transmitted over your network, and even decrypt data that is supposedly protected...
Someone could also join the network and launch attacks on your computer and any other devices using the network at that time. If file sharing has been left on or the personal firewall is misconfigured it's relatively easy to access the computer via an open Wi-Fi network. Someone could upload an executable program to a file on your hard drive that steals data or just leaves a back door for future access...
Even though many Wi-Fi routers come with WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) enabled by default, a lot of people don't want to be bothered with setting up a password, despite the fact that you don't have to type it in every time you log on. The Wigle.net (Wireless Geographic Logging Engine) site shows that of 26.8 million Wi-Fi networks logged by volunteers who were "war driving"--driving around in cars and using laptops or PDAs to find wireless networks--49 percent were listed as secured with encryption and nearly 28 percent were shown to be not using encryption. (On the remaining 23 percent the security level was unknown.)
The article provides a link to an
interactive map at Wigle.net. I navigated it to get the screen shot embedded above showing wi-fi networks in my part of the country. You can zoom in to street level. Shown here is an area in the central Chicago area:
You can use the map to find your own street and perhaps your own house or apartment. If you're sitting there now and your wi-fi isn't secured, you are taking a major risk for no good reason.
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