How Your Security and Privacy Are at Risk

The hardware to monitor wireless communications is readily available and inexpensive. As we have mentioned previously, high gain and directional antennas can be purchased to increase one's ability to capture and analyze traffic. When wireless standards emerge and the technology becomes more widespread, wireless hacking has the potential to become as prevalent as it is on wired networks today.

One of the biggest threats to corporate intranets is attack through people's PCs at home. The price on this kind of hardware has dropped to levels where it is being found in home networking scenarios. We have discussed the issue of securing home PCs and personal firewalls. All of those points can be applied in the scenario of wireless networks. Here, home users with wireless networks might be opening up their home network—and possibly their connection to their employer—to unauthorized users. Think of it as another access point that needs to be protected. Most of today's home wireless networking products are weak on the security side. Most only require the equivalent of an SSID. After the SSID is installed, the network is up and running. Most home users are not aware of the security risks that they might be imposing on their company's intranet.