Wi-Fi Is Broken, Say Experts
October 22, 2007 | by Christopher Nickson
Your Wi-Fi security is probably a lot lower than you imagine, and can easily be hacked.
How safe is your Wi-Fi? Not as much as you might hope, according to some experts. And much of it is due to compatibility issues.
There are two standards for security in Wi-Fi. The basic one is known as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). The other, new, standard is Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which was updated in 2004 as WPA-2. However, to use either of the improved standards you need Windows Vista, Mac OSX, Linux, or XP with SP2 installed. That means many are unable to use it, leaving them quite vulnerable.
“WEP as a security measure is so broken that your (and everyone else's) kid sister can easily circumvent it," computer security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, co-author of the aircrack-ptw tool that can crack WEP in minutes, told the BBC.
He’s not the first to hack WEP, either. Nor the last – it’s just been done again by Vivek Ramachandran of AirTight Networks, the BBC reported.
All this mean people can not only piggyback on your Wi-Fi connection, but that they can also track you online. They could also use your connection for criminal activities that could end up being traced back to you.
In word, they all say, Wi-Fi is broken. You might want to think about next time you settle into your favorite Wi-Fi hotspot and open the laptop. Or next time you log on at home.
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