New attack cracks common Wi-Fi encryption in a minute

Network World ^ | 27 August 2009 | Robert McMillan

[djf]

Unsecured users are EXTREMELY common.

Years ago I got my hand on a Linksys wireless card. I didn’t have a service or a provider, so it sat on the shelf for a while.

Well, one day I plugged it in just to see and the darn thing connected!!

My neighbor had wireless with no security turned on.

So a couple months later. I charged the laptop battery good, set it on my front seat in my car, and just for the hell of it, started Network Stumbler and drove aroung the block.

I was hitting two to four wireless networks per block. Half or so of them unsecured.

The reason is people, probably most people, don’t want to be network engineers, they just want it to work out of the box. So they get the hardware, plug it in and turn it on, then do the minimal amount they need to get connected.

Part of the problem also being the people who run unsecured networks are also the people who never turned off sharing for their files and folders. Odds are very, very high that they’re infected.

[ken in texas]

Do you have FIOS? My Verison FIOS router came with a default WEP key based on the MAC address. If you could get the router’s MAC address, you basically had the key. First thing I did was change the key.

[Califelephant]

Thanks Ken ... yes, I think there is a way to access the FIOS router from my PC ... I’ll spend some time figuring out how to do that (and change my key), this week.