Australian police take up wardriving to close down unsecured Wi-Fi networks
Next time the Queensland, Australia police knock on your door, don’t worry, they’re there to just educate you about the dangers of unsecured Wi-Fi in your home.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the Queensland Police fraud squad have decided to turn a very serious eye towards unsecured wireless networks to try to prevent crimes from happening. An unknown number of officers will begin paroling residential streets to sniff out unsecured wireless networks, an act known as ‘wardriving’ amongst hackers.
While it may not sound like a serious threat, it is. If someone is able to gain unauthorized access to your network, they may be able to commit identity theft, access sensitive files on your computers, or even use your Internet account to send out viruses and spam emails. None of these acts will end pleasantly for the person with the unsecured network, but the good news is that in Queensland, the mere act of accessing someone else’s broadband connection without permission is illegal. While catching people in the act is difficult, this is where the movement for prevention by the police comes in.
While there has been no huge surge in wardriving crimes, the police see the potential as hackers have begun using satellite maps to mark out areas that have large numbers of unsecured networks. So the name of the game at this point is prevention according to Detective Superintendent Brian Hay who told the newspaper, ”These things are going to be exploited more and more as time goes on … we want to close the holes before too much damage is done.”
There is no known program like this anywhere else in the world, and it has already grabbed the attention of Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf, head of the NSW Police Computer Crimes Unit, who is watching it closely. ”Apart from notifying people that their wireless is unsecure I don’t know what else would be achieved by it”, said Det. van der Graaf. He went to add, “But if their trial is fruitful we’d always participate in something that works.”
The simplest solution is to read your instruction manuals and get those routers secured ASAP.
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