Queensland Police to Look For Unsecured WiFi Spots 255
OzPeter writes "As a part of National Consumer Fraud week, the Queensland Police are going war driving in order to identify insecure WiFi setups. From the press release: 'The War Driving Project involves police conducting proactive patrols of residential and commercial areas to identify unprotected connections. Police will follow this up with a letterbox drop in the targeted area with information on how to effectively secure your connection.' While some people may like having an open WiFi AP its interesting to see that the Police also feel that 'Having WEP encryption is like using a closed screen door as your sole means of security at home. The WPA or WPA2 security encryption is certainly what we would recommend as it offers a high degree of protection.'"
How times have changed (Score:5, Interesting)
It's Basic Infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an open Wifi setup. My attitude is that connectivity has become basic infrastructure, and all "lock it down" freaks have just bought into the agenda of ISPs who don't want us to share bandwidth to boost their own profits.
If you're a guest in my home, you're welcome to use the bandwidth, along with the lights and water. Can you imagine visitig a friend only to be told, "Look, here's the PIN code to unlock the lights, and here's the key in case you want to wash your hands." Ridiculous. I accept that there's a risk of someone lurking in their car outside the property boundary to leech off my internet connection, but there's a risk of someone stealing water from my outside, unprotected taps, too. OTOH, if bandwidth were shared freely everywhere there'd be no need to sneak around "stealing" it, would there?
It's the 21st Century, man. Get over it!
Google (Score:5, Interesting)
This looks like a money grab from this years' budget
The QPS is always complaining that they do not have enough funding to pay their staff. Now they are wasting precious manhours to mine data that they could easily purchase (or even receive for free) from Google.
Re:wifi security (Score:5, Interesting)
Insecure WiFi != Insecure network.
At home I have two WiFi network over the same AP, one is open an the other use WPA2, they are in independent networks and with a firewall between both, plus the open is capped to use at max 2mbps.
Re:It's Basic Infrastructure (Score:3, Interesting)
Fon router project allows this.
you share 10% of your bandwidth on the open guest SSID, which is on a separate WLAN from yours.
Good if you have couch surfers stay allot too.
I agree that everyone locking down their wifi is just get sucked into the fear mentality. If all routers shared a small amount of their bandwidth you would not need to use GSM, and could make calls from almost anywhere using Viber for example or another SIP like service.
The mobile phone companies would also be forced to provide a better service because there was another alternative available when your mobile.
It maybe also be that the opens source routers like Tomatos USB offer multiple SSID's
Ged
Possible Abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it odd that QPS Media has failed to supply the public with any technical information on what tools they are using and the scope of the exercise
Are they simply searching for wireless networks? Or going as far as trying default passwords?
Are they geocaching MAC Addresses and SSIDs that will be used in other investigations?
Are they sniffing traffic? Are they collecting any personally identifiable information?
While this is a nice service, I do think this does not fall under the purview of the state police
If this is simply a SIGINT operation in disguise, it is better left to the DSD or ASIO
If this is simply a community service, the state governement should use grants to coerce the industry to extend their voluntary code of practice so that ISP's are responsible for making their customers aware of the risks as part of the signup process.
Re:It's Basic Infrastructure (Score:4, Interesting)
My attitude is that connectivity has become basic infrastructure
I concur. I would like to see connections open everywhere with the option of limited surfing as Guest (should the host feel generous) or having to authenticate to my ISP (or the NBN or some central authority/network) through this random open connection, and have all usage billed to my account.
australian Accountability (Score:4, Interesting)
thats exactly it !
realistically hacking a wpa setup by a person with no experience is pretty unsecured
(do you really want to know how many people have password1 or changeme...)
have a look at this:
http://open.youyuxi.com/
australia is censored beyond what I certainly expected...
regards
John Jones
Re:It's Basic Infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
My attitude is that if I'm out and about and want to get WIFI, I'd like other people to provide open guest networks, so it makes sense for me to provide one for other people to use.
Re:It's Basic Infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an open Wifi setup. My attitude is that connectivity has become basic infrastructure, and all "lock it down" freaks have just bought into the agenda of ISPs who don't want us to share bandwidth to boost their own profits.
Screw the ISP I don't want my cheap-ass neighbors slowing my Netflix down to a crawl while they download 10 seasons of some anime shit.
If we all "had internet" and people stuck to HTTP web traffic I wouldn't care. But I've had roomates before--hell I have myself as a roomate and I know that my internet is not big enough for the both of me from time-to-time let alone neighbors.
If I had a gig-e pipe they could be free to do as they please but I don't pay for my apartment building's electric bill, I pay for mine. And based on the fact that I can't even leave my laundry detergent on my little spot of shelf in my apartment building without it being used up in a couple weeks (and 2 loads of laundry from me) I know if they could secretly plug their water into my tap they would.
If I'm playing TF2 I expect there to be 0 torrenting and streaming on my connection so that my pings stay reasonable. It's bad enough knowing if one of my computers found an 'interesting' RSS feed let alone having two moochie neighbors.
Re:It's Basic Infrastructure (Score:2, Interesting)
Me too. And that's why I think what the Queensland police is doing is sort of OK. I don't want to use someone's Wifi if the they don't mean to leave it open. My stance is that an open network is open to everyone, practically, legally and morally, because it uses a public resource, advertises itself as open and in no way gives any indication that it is not meant to be open, even though that is trivially easy to do. People who don't want strangers on their Wifi should turn on encryption, and if that's what the police tells them, then I'm fine with it. I have a hunch that the police will do quite a bit of fearmongering on top of that, and that's not OK. But I don't want to step on people's toes when I use someone else's Wifi, so if you don't want me there, put up the virtual fence.
Re:Accountability (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh no, it doesn't work that way. If your government does its job properly then no-one needs to lock their cars, and you hardly need cops.
Only if you're deluded.
Crime is part of the human condition, even in a mythical perfect communist state there would still be outliers who steal shit. That is just a foolish line of thought because it is foisting responsibility of protecting your property from casual small scale crime on to society just because you're too god damn lazy to lock your doors. The GP's offered social environment is basically a monoculture and, like crop monocultures, it is highly vulnerable to disease wiping out the lot — if you trust everyone by making no effort to protect your stuff then the first crook who comes along will make an absolute killing robbing everyone blind.
Government and society are nice in that they provide herd safety but it is still the responsibility of each individual within the herd to manage their personal interests themselves, you don't get to externalise (Remember that thing we really hate corporations for doing?) all your personal responsibilities onto everyone else. At least, not unless you're rich enough to afford to pay people to run around cleaning up your mistakes after you.
Re:It's Basic Infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, this scenario may or may not be likely, but you do have to ask yourself if it's worth it to have an open connection.