Wi-Fi hotspots vulnerable to hacking says BBC's Watchdog
- Fri, 30 Oct 2009
- Comments (1)
Thousands of hotspots provided by Britain's top three Wi-Fi networks – BT Openzone, The Cloud and T-Mobile – are vulnerable to attacks by cybercriminals, according to a BBC Watchdog episode broadcast last night.
The programme claimed that it used hacking equipment easily available to the public to hijack wireless traffic at several hotspots on trains and in airport lounges, hotels and high-street outlets.
Hackers could use this access to gather sensitive personal information, such as bank account details.
In the programme, Rav Wilding, Crimewatch presenter and a former policeman, created an email account on his laptop at a hotspot.
Within seconds, members of the Watchdog team could access Wilding's email using an unspecified form of attack.
Since being alerted to the vulnerabilities, all three wireless providers are taking measures to tighten security.
BT Openzone told Crimewatch that it was reviewing their "proactive approach to providing secure and user-friendly authentication".
T-Mobile has emphasised the security benefits of using VPNs Virtual Private Networks on its homepage, while The Cloud says it is working on how to develop VPN technology.
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Comments
Latest comments
November 05 14:51
Rossano Ferraris
A lot of hacker tools are available on the net which do not require a particular level of skill to make them work and for an individual to use them to exploit wireless networks.
Much of the work to prevent these incidents from occurring should be done by the company offering the Wi-Fi service as all data from end systems to the VPN gateway should be encrypted and authenticated, possibly using a strong authentication.
Needless to say part of the job should also be done by the end user who need to put in place best practice through the use of a high quality anti-malware software which combines anti-virus and anti-spyware operation for detection and blocking.
Rossano Ferraris, CA ISBU Research Team