Of all the mods/hacks I’ve seen, this is both the most ingenious and somewhat scary. A pair of bored yet crafty American (not Dutch!) fellows took a retired Army Drone and re-deployed it with a new, lesser violent mission — to sniff for WiFi networks. Controlling the drone only needs human intervention for takeoff and landing. Once up in the air, pre-plotted routes using Google Earth keep the plane on it’s dedicated route.
While LTE starts rolling out from major U.S. carriers in 2011, the WiMax Forum is hoping to have the so-called WiMax 2 standard up and ready to go by the start of 2012.
Most WiMAX operators plan to offer their services for mobile users by 2012, providing enough smartphones are developed that can actually handle the technology says a report by Infonetics Research.
WiMAX is currently limited by a number of factors and is mainly employed for nomadic broadband services, but most operators want that to change in the near future. Two-thirds of the 25 operators asked want to offer WiMAX for mobile broadband within the next two years.
Researchers at wireless security company AirTight Networks have uncovered a vulnerability in the widely used WPA2 security protocol, part of the 802.11 standard. The vulnerability, termed "Hole 196", which can be exploited by attackers already authenticated to the network, allows decryption of data sent by other users across the network.
Has search and advertising giant Google been tracking you just to sell you stuff -- or is it because the U.S. government asked it to? A congressional hearing later today may raise more questions than answers.
A white paper from HP discusses the threats posed to 802.11 wireless LANs from hackers and provides best-practices approaches to securing WLANs.
Entitled Securing the Enterprise Wireless LAN: How to protect against security breaches in a wireless age, the paper offers guidance from developing appropriate security policies to how to manage individual pieces of WLAN hardware. Ric Hall, a systems architect in the HP Network Architecture, Global Network Engineering organization, authored the paper. HP offers design, implementation, monitoring and management services for WLANs.
Wi-Fi is everywhere. Whether you travel for business or simply need Internet access while out and about, your options are plentiful. You can sign on at airports, hotels, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, and now, airplanes. What are your risk factors when accessing wireless? There are plenty. Wi-Fi wasn't born to be secure. It was born to be convenient. Wireless networks broadcast messages using radio and are thus more susceptible to eavesdropping than wired networks.
Internet users in Germany, whose wireless networks are left password unprotected, can be fined up to 100 euros, according to a recent ruling by Germany’s top criminal court.
The ruling is in response to a musician’s lawsuit against a user whose unprotected wireless network was used for downloading and sharing music over P2P.
Just how realistic is the ruling, from a security perspective? Is a weak password protected wireless network, any different than the one with no password security at all?
Bangalore’s wi-fi networks are not secure. Two sting reports published by Bangalore Mirror showed how wi-fi networks at Electronics City and Bengaluru International Airport (BIA) were vulnerable to hacking. However, two computer engineering students Michael Connor and Balaji Narayan from RV College of Engineering took it up as a challenge and have now come up with a software solution, called Byzanite Secure Multi-Cast Routing, that thwarts insider attacks.
Wireless networks are a wonderful invention. They give us the ability to easily deploy a complex network of computers without the need to physically wire them up.
