It’s good to chalk?
By David Dawson
 Picture
a crisp. Yellow. Curved. Tasty (apart from cheese
& onion flavour). And now, in the forefront of
hack attacks on large companies. As WiFi networks
proliferate across London and the rest of the world,
the innocent Pringles container has proved an ideal
medium for capturing the signals and illegally accessing
these wireless networks.
WiFi describes the technology that allows cable free
interconnection with broadband Internet applications
and services in the enterprise. Initially, it was
conceived to replace coaxial cables and remove the
need to drill holes and string wires. But companies
are now finding them particularly useful in areas
prone to intensive concentrations of users, such as
office lobbies and meeting rooms.
There were plentiful security warnings when these
networks started appearing, primarily in the US. But
the speed with which these networks have taken off
– primarily because of their relative cheapness,
ease of setting up and lack of unsightly cables –
largely left these issues behind. Now, however, hackers
have discovered that a Pringles container makes an
ideal directional antenna to aid the discovery, and
illegal use, of these networks.
Wardriving is a usefully-coined new word to describe
the process of driving around a city centre with a
laptop, a wireless network card and a Pringles can
to find accessible wireless networks. Once discovered,
there is rarely any instance of actual harm carried
out to internal computer systems: users tend to use
the bandwidth for their own online purposes. Alternatively,
they leave a couple of chalk marks on the nearest
wall or pavement indicating whether the wireless access,
is open, closed or encrypted, and notes about bandwidth
availability and joining IDs.
This latter practice – known as warchalking
– was inspired by the little marks hobos used
to leave for each other in the Great Depression to
indicate the most likely source of local free food,
and has grown into a worldwide cult whose members
claim peaceful intentions.
But telecom companies and security experts are, naturally,
unimpressed by this sort of behaviour, pointing out
that at the very least it limits the bandwidth available
for other users. BT, for one, has been advising businesses
that provide wireless networks on methods of improving
their security. The Secret Service, meanwhile, has
taken to patrolling the streets of Washington with
said Pringles container looking for security holes
in government buildings. The WLAN association, meanwhile,
even acknowledges that the security ‘confusion’
threatens to ‘slow market growth across all
market segments’
In many ways, this invasion of corporate space by
someone armed with a crisp container mirrors how these
cheap wireless networks could eclipse the development
of vastly expensive 3G networks. As Nicholas Negopronte,
co-founder and chairman of the MIT Media Laboratory,
comments: “Think of a pond with one water lily,
then two, then four, then many overlapping, with their
stems reaching into the Internet…. In the future,
Wi-Fi systems will act like a small router, relaying
to its nearest neighbours. Messages can hop peer-to-peer,
leaping from lily to lily like frogs — the stems
are not required. You have a broadband telecommunications
system, built by the people, for the people.”
For more information about wireless networks and
their role for the commercial sector, please
email us here.
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