Home Wi-Fi networks are popping up all over the place, with more and more people plugging them into their broadband Internet connections. But beware of a security flaw which has been identified by US-CERT, a USA-based industry body.
It turns out that the very feature which is designed to make Wi-Fi installation easy has in fact opened a security flaw. The “Wi-Fi Protected Set-up” or WPS protocol, was designed to allow “unskilled” (or non-nerd) home users set up WPA encryption without a lot of heartache. As part of the process, users can use shortened passwords to add new devices to the network, exposing the access point to educated computer criminals (eg. hackers) who are able to compromise the security. Using a “Brute Force” hacking attack, cyber deviates are able to break 8-PIN passwords within 2 hours by deciphering the information returned from the router.
Most new Wi-Fi routers shipping today come with the WPS feature activated as default, meaning millions of Wi-Fi hot spots are potentially vulnerable to attack.
So if you took a quantum leap recently and installed a home Wi-Fi network, I suggest you check your security setting to make sure your pimple-faced 14-year-old neighbour isn’t compromising your service.
