Saturday, February 17, 2007
Wireless internet and default settings
Its an interesting point but even in Port Macquarie, if you go around in your car with an open laptop and you will probably notice your machine automatically attempting to connecting to various wireless Internet routers that local residents have set up but have not protected from other users.
An American technical researcher believes that people are not protecting themselves adequately from hackers or free loaders and by having an unprotected network that anyone can jump on leaves the persons computers prone to hacker attack or remote controlling.
According to the expert, few people who operate wide-open wireless networks actually have protection using even the simplest encryption technology and thoses that do employ the technology tend to leave the routers default user name and password needed to reconfigure the router as factory default for the life of the router..
Its possible that consumers aren't terribly worried about their neighbours "sniffing" the ambient wireless airwaves for passwords and other sensitive data.
In all reality, its probably a mwebsite running malicious code that would be more of a threat than neighbours as Symantec Corp. have discovered a series exploits that show how an Internet user running any one of several name-brand routers under the default factory settings could be in a real mess in a very quickly by browsing to a malicious Web site.
# posted by Peter Saville - IT Consultant @ 4:01 PM 
