Wireless

The It networks of 400 companies and organisations - many with national and international reputations - were pinpointed as prime targets for criminal attack yesterday in a brief 15-minute sweep of Bristol's commercial district. All use wireless broadband access known as wi-fi and about half appeared completely unprotected.

Though some have encrypted networks not one of those surveyed is completely secure, warns internet security consultancy WhiteHat.

Going online these days exposes your PC to all kinds of cyber-nasties such as viruses and spyware. To combat them, we use anti-virus and anti-spyware software. You also can subject yourself to a wide variety of hacker attacks that try to access your computer. These kinds of attacks try to steal your passwords, credit card numbers, banking information and any other kind of sensitive information you may have stored on your computer's hard drive. For those problems, we install firewalls that hopefully let only the good data come in.

What if Google (GOOG) wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it?

Intel Corp. is developing a way to locate a Wi-Fi user by timing how long it takes for packets to travel to and from a wireless access point, which could prevent users outside a house or office from accessing a Wi-Fi network indoors.

Precision location technology is one of several key ideas for the next few years that Justin Rattner, Intel senior fellow and director of the company's Corporate Technology Group, showed off during a keynote presentation on the last day of the Fall Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco Thursday.

A new report from research firm In-Stat hammers home the notion that dual-mode cellular/ Wi-Fi smartphones are key to expanding the wireless VoIP market. The report's projections are bold: From the beginning of broad shipments in 2007 to the start of 2009, 66 million dual-mode devices will be in operation, In-Stat predicts. Zero to 66 million in less than two years. That's growth.

Finland called on its citizens to take more care securing their Wi-Fi networks after it emerged this week that about Euro 200,000 (US$245,400) had been stolen from a local bank using an unprotected home network.

The Helsinki branch of global financing company GE Money called on police to investigate the theft in June. The money, which has since been recovered, was stolen from one of GE Money's accounts at a local bank, said Jukkapekka Risu, investigating officer for the Helsinki police.

McAfee will next week launch a subscription-based software product for securing home wireless routers.

The Wireless Home Network Security software automatically sets up encryption keys on Wi-Fi routers and the PCs connected to them and then rotates the keys every three hours, according to Stu Elefant, senior product manager for wireless and new initiatives at McAfee. It will work with older Wi-Fi systems that use WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption, as well as current equipment that also supports the newer WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and WPA 2 technologies, he said.

Benjamin Smith III and Gregory Straszkiewicz both were arrested for allegedly stealing something no one could see, hear or feel. That thing was valuable enough for victims to press charges in both cases. But the arrests were over something many consumers throw out their windows every day: a Wi-Fi signal.

When Nintendo first released its much-anticipated handheld game device, the DS, last year, it excitedly promoted many things about it. The dual screens, for example. The stylus. The fact that it was released before Sony's mini-wonder, the PSP.

But one thing it didn't talk too much about was that the DS has built-in Wi-Fi capabilities, and in fact one of the basic DS games, "Pictochat," incorporates that feature so that many players can play together wirelessly when in close proximity.

Hackers at DefCon launched nearly 2,500 wireless attacks over a two-day, 10-hour monitoring period, finds an AirDefense study. AirDefense, the leader in Anywhere, Anytime wireless security and monitoring, reports the level of attacks gained in complexity over the last year. It also reported a new wi-phishing attack in addition to large numbers of Evil Twin attacks.