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‘wifi’ Archives
“Wi-Fi refugees” shelter in West Virginia mountains
The BBC reports on the phenomenon of people who claim to have been made sick by wi-fi and mobile phones, and now seek refuge in Green Bank, West Virginia. This town is situated in the US Radio Quiet Zone, where there is no wireless allowed within a 13,000 square mile range to prevent interference with a number of major radio telescopes. Some of [...]
WiFi-sniffing picture frame
This picture frame, made from an ancient Pentium II laptop, displayes images sniffed out of public WiFi connections: "Many coffee shops in Vancouver feature both local art and wi-fi, so why not combine the two?" (more...)
Federal judge: Open WiFi doesn’t make you liable for your neighbors’ misdeeds
A Federal judge in Illinois has once again rebuffed a copyright troll's request for easy court orders to allow him to connect IP addresses with people. The judge said that open wireless networks and other factors make the connection between IP addresses and defendants difficult, and that making it easy to connect people and IPs would invite [...]
Typhoid adware hijacks LAN, inserts ads into uninfected computers’ browsers
Security researchers at the University of Calgary have identified a new malware they call "Typhoid." Typhoid impersonates the wireless router on your local network, effecting a man-in-the-middle attack that allows it to insert ads into the browsing sessions of all the other, uninfected users on the LAN. Typically, adware authors install their [...]
Chinese scientists demonstrate 2Mbps internet over LED light bulbs
LED data transmission used to be all the rage -- we fondly remember beaming Palm Pilot contacts via IrDA. Then we got omni-directional Bluetooth and building-penetrating WiFi, and put all that caveman stuff behind us. But now, scientists the world over are looking to bring back line-of-sight networking, and the latest demonstration has Chinese [...]
Google’s Free Airport Wi-Fi: Five Ways to Protect Yourself
Free Wi-Fi while you're waiting for your flight? Sounds like a great way to save money, and kudos to Google for offering it at many U.S. airports during the holidays. Unfortunately, Google's generosity may also lure identity thieves and nefarious hackers to the nation's terminals to prey on clueless travelers. Public hotspots, which by nature [...]
Google Offers Free Wi-Fi at Airports During the Holidays
Delayed flights and hold-overs won't tempt you with $10-a-day Wi-Fi this holiday season. That's because Google has bought out web service at 47 airports through Jan. 15, 2010, and offers it free, assuming you don't mind a little soft advertising. (more...)
RSA Security Pros Don’t Practice What They Preach
Of all the events you might attend, you'd think a security convention would be the least likely place to have attendees hopping onto "free public WiFi" and other insecure connections. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong. In fact, a network monitoring study conducted at last week's RSA Conference by wireless security vendor AirPatrol turned up [...]
New bill proposes everyone keep Wifi logs for police
"Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act," or Internet Safety Act. I always wonder who names these bills? Ugh... Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee [...]
BackTrack 4 beta released
The Remote Exploit Development Team has just announced BackTrack 4 Beta. BackTrack is a Linux based LiveCD intended for security testing and we’ve been watching the project since the very early days. They say this new beta is both stable and usable. They’ve moved towards behaving like an actual distribution: it’s based on Debian core, they [...]
All your passports are belong to us
Think of it this way: Chris Paget just did you a service by hacking your passport and stealing your identity. Using a $250 Motorola RFID reader and antenna connected to his laptop, Chris recently drove around San Francisco reading RFID tags from passports, driver licenses, and other identity documents. In just 20 minutes, he found and cloned the [...]
xkcd-style WEP cracking in real life
My love for xkcd comics has influenced me to write this modified autoconfig "cracking" tool that cracks Wifi WEP password from your neighbors, exactly the way shown in xkcd comic number 416... Here is the tool in action... (more...)
Why Netbooks Will Soon Cost $99
Subnotebooks like the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Mini 9 and the HP 2133 Mini-note will soon cost as little as $99. The catch? You'll need to commit to a two-year mobile broadband contract. The low cost will come courtesy of a subsidy identical to the one you already get with your cell phone. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that HP is [...]
Russians use NVIDIA card to crack WPA/WPA2 security: WiFi is insecure again.
WiFi is no longer secure enough to protect wireless data. Global Secure Systems has said that a Russian's firm's use of the latest NVidia graphics cards to accelerate WiFi ‘password recovery' times by up to an astonishing 10,000 per cent proves that WiFi's WPA and WPA2 encryption systems are no longer enough to protect wireless [...]
Metasploit 3.2 Offers More “Evil Deeds”
Hacking into systems (albeit for testing purposes) is apparently getting easier with the upcoming open source Metasploit 3.2 framework, according to its creator. During a packed presentation at that SecTor conference here yesterday, Metasploit creator H. D. Moore detailed some of the new features in the upcoming Metasploit 3.2 release. They [...]
Study: Hotel Networks Put Corporate Users at Risk
You’re putting your company's data at risk when you connect to a hotel network, according to a new study examining Internet connections at U.S. hotels. The Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University surveyed nearly 150 hotels and then conducted on-site vulnerability testing on a sampling of about 50 hotels. About 20 percent of [...]
Attacks Continue on Retail Stores and Restaurants
Attacks on local retail establishments continue to net criminals large volumes of personal data, despite the recent arrest and indictment of a large group of criminals using the same attack vector. Authorities late last week acknowledged that a ring of cyber-thieves has stolen tens of thousands of credit card numbers from Louisiana and [...]
Bill criminalizing WiFi leeching shot down, and rightly so
If you use someone else's WiFi signal without permission, you're a thief. That's the conclusion of a bill introduced into the Maryland General Assembly last week. Sponsored by Delegate LeRoy E. Myers, Jr., the legislation would criminalize the unauthorized use of a wireless access point in the state; it has since received an "unfavorable report" [...]
