Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Wireless In-Security Used by Terrorists

Most of you reading this, will have heard about the bomb-blasts that have rocked Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Five minutes before each of the blasts the terrorists "Indian Mujahedin" sent out e-mails to the media warning about the threats and provoking the authorities to stop them in time.

Through the investigation the authorities have identified a wireless router belonging to an American Family in New Bombay as the source of the e-mails. Unfortunately for the family, their wireless router had no form of security or logging enabled.

Now not only is the family in a legal mess trying to prove their innocence without logs but also the terrorists will be able to easily get away without much hope of their identity being tracked. What concerns me most is that even if the family had enabled WEP encryption on their router, it would have taken nothing more then a few minutes to crack the password.

If you want to protect your wireless router from external threats, I would recommend implementing a combination of WEP or WPA encryption and MAC Address Filtering. For instructions, you can refer to this article from PC Magazine.

Update: Since I have last heard, the family is still being made to run around trying to prove their innocence. The wireless-router had no logging mechanism enabled, so its not possible to confirm whether the e-mail was sent by the family or a random passerby.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

i really agree with you , home users have to get educated and use more tougher passwords if they dont know they have get others help who know a bit of wireless and its security
a few ppl in bangalore a team called indiancyberarmy has taken the intiative and have started the awareness....
http://www.timesnow.tv/Wi-fi-an-easy-target-for-terrorists/videoshow/4326506.cms