Washington Post claims Wi-Fi "dangerous security risk"

THE WASHINGTON POST is indulging in a fair amount of scaremongering about wireless LANs today, but we wonder if the august journal is aware that journalists are often the folk who know the least about the technology?

An article Jonathan Krim has written suggests that Wi-Fi is the most dangerous risk to security on the planet. And that's just risible.

The article quotes one US army man Clifton Poole, who, equipped with a "sniffer" detects wi-fi LANs galore on i-66.

Colonel Poole notices that most of the wi-fi LANs are vulnerable, leading the Washington Post writer to conclude that "wi fi vulnerability is now one of the most serious threats to computer security".

We think not. It's users, dear sir.

As Tom Henderson pointed out in his classic column You've been Ripped, when he turned his sniffer on at CeBIT NY he detected adulterous relationships, PCs with Trojans that tried to infect other machines, dirty pictures, user names, visits to dubious porn sites, credit card numbers, and more.

The "fellow members of the press" simply didn't use encryption, and left their machines wide open to anyone who cared to notice.

You can find the Washington Post here, another corrective to this panic mongering here, and next week's lottery winners are 15-14-27-12-19 and the bonus ball is 42. Encrypt that. µ