Promiscuity May Lead to Viruses

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Kelly Martin of SecurityFocus, a leading online security resource, has highlighted how virus writer’s anonymity could be easily maintained by the explosion in wireless networks within an article written for The Register. See “The Wi-Fi explosion: a virus writer’s dream” for the full text.

Manufacturers of wireless equipment nearly always send their kit out into the field with the least privledges or minimum security enabled. RSL have on a number of occasions visited customers using WiFi technology straight out the box, with the unsuspecting users not even knowing that they were insecure! Even the most commonly adopted WiFi standards have poor security at best. Utilities and tools are freely available on the net to compromise these networks.

Many corporates have identified wireless technologies as a major security risk to their IT infrastructure. There have been occasions when well meaning employees have fitted insecure wireless kit to a corporate network without the assistance or knowledge of their IT team. Unfortunately the employees were exposing their company’s IT system to a new hacking risk.