inside the man

Thursday, January 08, 2004

Wardriving in Calgary
On January 6, 2004, I was driving into Calgary, Alberta from the North and decided to try a little wardriving. I fired up the laptop and turned on Network Stumbler and got my first hit right at the city limits on Deerfoot Trail. By the time I had reached my downtown destination, following one brief detour across the river for coffee, I had 136 hits. Interestingly, about 60 of these did not have WEP enabled, and 11 were peer nodes. I should also mention that there is a high correlation between end points with no encryption (WEP turned off) and end points that are clearly using default SSIDs.
What are people thinking? Adding a wireless endpoint to your home or office and not securing it in some way is the digital equivalent of building a new external doorway into your home of office and not even bothering to install a door!

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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Returned to working as a Management Consultant, specializing in risk, security, and regulatory compliance, with Fujitsu Canada after running the IT shop in the largest library in the South Pacific.

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