London leads in WiFi access points

SECURITY FIRM RSA said in its latest annual Wireless Security Survey that London still has far more wireless network access points with 12,276 than either New York City, with 9,227, or Paris, with 4,481.

RSA, which is the IT security subsidiary of storage vendor EMC, has commissioned these independent WiFi security surveys for three years running. It found explosive growth since 2007 of 543 per cent in the number of WiFi access points in Paris, strong growth of 72 per cent in London, and healthy growth of 45 per cent in New York.

Paris also had the largest increase in the number of public WiFi hotspots with 300 per cent growth, followed by New York with 44 per cent growth and London with just 34 per cent.

New York still has the highest percentage of public hotspots with 15 per cent, leading both Paris at six per cent and London at five per cent.

As a security vendor, RSA is of course hoping its survey will raise security awareness among top IT executives. In introducing its report, the company mentioned the August 2008 indictment of an international ring of cyber-criminals for allegedly accessing poorly secured corporate wireless networks to steal more than 40 million credit card numbers.

Sam Curry, RSA's VP of Identity and Access Assurance, admonished, " Clearly... it is more important than ever to close the wireless loophole and ensure that the countless investments being made in securing networks everywhere are not undone by leaving the back-door wide-open."

Indeed, war-driving for unsecured WiFi access points has thoroughly replaced war-dialing for unprotected dial-in modems as the preferred attack mode of network intruders.

Accordingly, the survey noted whether, and how, the WiFi access points that it detected, excluding public hotspots, were secured.

As the report details, the survey results show dramatic recent improvements. In New York, 97 per cent of corporate access points used encryption, up from 76 per cent in 2007, and in Paris, 94 per cent of corporate access points were encrypted. In London however, 20 per cent of corporate access points were found to be completely unsecured.

The survey also broke down how many WiFi access points were still using the relatively vulnerable Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption versus the comparatively more secure WiFi Protected Access (WPA) or WPA2.

Paris again was found to have a substantial lead, with 72 per cent of access points using advanced security, whilst only 49 per cent of access points did in New York and just 48 per cent in London, with most access points using either WEP or having no security at all.

Said RSA's Curry, "Such is the speed at which WEP can be routinely cracked that it barely constitutes paper-thin protection in the face of today's sophisticated hackers. We would strongly urge wireless network administrators to discount WEP as a viable security mechanism and upgrade to WPA – or stronger – without delay." µ

L'Inq
ISP Review