Saw a column on Digital Life today about sharing your wireless
network with other users.
What do you think?
Me thinks the answer lies in what you want to protect. The focus
is on data protection. Data lies in your computer, thus the logic
to secure your computer, rather than your network.
If we look at [email protected] the network is open. Is anything
worth there? Or is targetting users who use [email protected] more
attractive? 
Rules aside... a black mark is always a black mark (my opinion).
If some funny user decides to try another bomb hoax stunt and I'm
arrested, I won't feel good. Not even if my name is cleared.
How do you feel if someone have been downloading lots of stuffs
via P2P and the police knocks on your door one day for illegal
downloads? I have no P2P programs, so nothing to worry. But what if
you have P2P progams? How are you going to explain your files (save
for the legal ones)?
How would someone think of you? How are you going fill in job
application forms?
Article:
Ask any home user "Why lock your Wi-Fi?" and the answer
will inevitably be to keep out the crooks.
The most conventional method - possibly the only way the masses
know - is to use a password.
A media frenzy following Singapore's first Wi-Fi theft
conviction in January last year and a second conviction a month
later could have caused the knee-jerk reaction among Wi-Fi owners
here.
The first case involved a video game addict and the second, a
bomb hoax.
But it's time to throw out the password and go open - with your
Wi-Fi, that is.
Bizarre as the idea may sound, you're not any safer behind those
passwords than you are without them.
Do you really criminals bent on stealing your identity will be
thwarted by flimsy passwords? A simple programming script is all it
takes to crack them.
What's incredulous is that it's the people using the default
usernames and passwords of their routers who are congratulating
themselves for locking out bandwidth thieves.
Little do they know that the default settings of wireless
routers or access points are openly available on the Web. Anyone
keen to break in can simply look them up. Such passwords offer no
protection at all.
The number of networks retaining their default names is also
jaw-dropping. The many generic names like "wireless", "netgear" and
"linksys" only go to show how little people know about
security.
Still, Wi-Fi owners think they're safe.
Well, they could be right - they are safe. Safe from the
harmless passer-by who needs just a few minutes of access to check
his e-mail or find directions from online maps. Safe from the
neighbour's kid who struggles with school work on a hand-me-down
computer. The malicious hacker who steals credit card information
isn't going to be put off by a mere password. So is the paedophile
who exploits the anonymity offered by wireless signals to commit a
raft of crimes.
There are more effective ways to deter criminals. The answer
doesn't lie in passwords but in firewall and encryption programs.
Firewall logs show you the Internet protocol addresses of
intruders. Encrypted data is hard to make out without the software
to decode them.
If people secure their PCs - with encryption, anti-virus and
firewall tools - for instance - they shouldn't be too worried about
their networks.
This is renowned security guru Bruce Schneier's rationale for
running an open Wi-Fi at his home in Britain.
"If I configure my computer to be secure regardless of whether
the network is on, then it (securing my Wi-Fi) simply doesn't
matter," he wrote in a column in Wired magazine earlier this
year.
"If my computer isn't secure on a public network, securing my
own network isn't going to reduce my risk very much," wrote the
chief technology officer of BT Counterpane and author of Beyond
Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security In An Unsecure World.
More importantly, he likens giving free Wi-Fi to offering them a
hot cup of tea. "Similarly, I appreciate an open network when I am
otherwise without bandwidth... Pay it forward, I say."
What do you say?
