[oclug] Interesting drive home yesterday

[mail account]

All:

Yesterday I stopped partway home (Altavista & Industrial) and for the hell
of it turned on my laptop running Kismet with my (not particularly
sensitive) Netgear MA401 orinono-driver 802.11b card.  I then drove home
to Orleans along Innes Rd. at normal speed and it recorded 55 Access
Points along the drive, 47 of which were not even WEP-encrypted, many in
default configuration, allowing anyone to reconfigure using factory
passwords & web access.

I had not realized scale of the epidemic-level stupidity.

Identity theft? It is child's play to hijack a connection and email
account from your car. Unencrypted POP access to ISPs (including passwords
& accounts) was recorded in my drive, as well as HTTP headers etc.  Pr0n?  
using a live CD based distribution on a laptop, you could make anyone look
like a downloader to their ISP - and leave no evidence behind. Copyrighted
material down & uploaders?  You don't have to take chances with traceable
connections any more - just a drive.  I couldn't imagine a RIAA case
standing up in court if the courts were aware of the ease of disproving
identity.

If we could see 80211 wireless broadcasts as smog, Ottawa would look like
a coal-burning steam train climbing the Rockies from the 1800s.  The scary
thing about these numbers is that the bulk of them were corporate
locations, not residential!

--
Bill