I found myself sitting in the back seat of a car today, toying with Chess on the Mac. (And being defeated in ways I didn’t even understand. Quite discouraging.)<\/p>\n
Tired of the endless losses, I started up KisMAC<\/a> to show the wireless APs that I passed. Between Margarita’s in Nashua and my home, I found 232 access points.<\/p>\n As if doing that wasn’t enough to make me a nerdy loser, I went on to generate some statistics. 32% of the access points were open. (No encryption.) The remaining two-thirds were encrypted; 48% of the access points used WEP, and 21% used WPA. WEP is old an insecure; someone with some targeted utilities can spend about 15 minutes watching network traffic and crack the key to gain entry to your network.<\/p>\n It’s probably not surprising that the majority of the unsecured networks had names like “linksys” and “belkin54g.”<\/p>\n “Wireless Nashua” is an open access point in downtown Nashua. Stopped at a light I connected, and was taken to a captive portal splash page explaining that it’s free wifi for people at local businesses. Neat. A handful of other businesses had open access, too.<\/p>\n A few access points were named “hpsetup.” I’m not sure what this is; this is the only access point that was at the car dealership when I brought my car in for service. Connecting gave me a generic “not actually connected” fake IP, and there was no gateway, and a quick scan of the netblock suggested that there was nothing on it. I have no idea why this is my theory, but I think it might be connected to HP printers that have WiFi capability.<\/p>\n Driving by the hotel between the Bud Plant and the old McDonald’s in Merrimack, I noticed a network called Marriott (open), plus five GoldenTree open APs. I wasn’t aware that the hotel was a Marriott, nor do I know what GoldenTree means. (Ah-ha: GoldenTree is also known as Guest Tek, and provides tech solutions to hotels.)<\/p>\n The highlight, though, was an access point named “Cisco Sys. Security.” It sounds like something that would be set up by a CCNA, and you’d think it’d be locked down with WPA and pass through an ASA firewall before connecting to the rest of the network. All I know is that it was an actually an open AP.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I found myself sitting in the back seat of a car today, toying with Chess on the Mac. (And being defeated in ways I didn’t even understand. Quite discouraging.) Tired of the endless losses, I started up KisMAC to show … Continue reading