The Warped Zone

About 3 years ago I attended a security luncheon seminar at a press club hosted by a national telecom carrier and moderated by popular CBC broadcast journalist Wendy Mesley. I bet people went, yours truly included, to see Wendy in person ; after all, she is a topnotch TV anchor with a vibrant, engaging and pleasing personality (my all time favorite anchorbabe is Erica Hill, formerly of CNN and now with CBS, who is still stunning after making it to the People Magazine’s 100 most beautiful people list in 2006 [#35]). Wendy was definitely a show on her own but the seminar wasn’t bad at all. Former hackers turned G-men and RCMP crime busters were on the podium sharing their experiences , both from the conman and G-man side of the fence , likewise taking questions from the audience . At one point everyone froze momentarily, instinctively groped for their back pockets and wallets when the security experts hurled an unexpected question to the crowd “ have you ever tried googling your VISA or Mastercard account number ? If it shows up it is likely compromised as hackers may have sold your card number to scammers over the internet . Credit card numbers are sold from anywhere 10 cents to a dollar per number by cyberthieves. “ Everyone was silent, perturbed by the thought that their credit cards may have been compromised. In that brief moment of anxiety, Wendy Mesley turned from Snow White to evil Cruella de Vil for being a bearer of potential bad news 😦 We left sensitized with the importance of awareness and vigilance but at the same time apprehensive with the thought that danger lurks in cyberspace and that as implementors and users of technology we must be one step ahead of the underworld elements when it comes to protecting valuable information.
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Wireless is invading our homes these days – HDTV’s, Blue-Ray DVDs, Nintendo DSI’s, SLR cameras are slowly getting into the wireless bandwagon as well. Obviously there is a purpose for these devices going wireless and we can spend the whole day talking about the subject but what I’d like to talk about in this post is what people do nowadays – buying that cheap wireless router from the local store or through the internet mail order and attaching the unit to their cable or DSL allowing their PC’s and laptops to browse the net in a wireless fashion. The mobility feature of wireless is its main selling point and it is really great when you have more than one PC or laptop at home – it gets rid of the cabling hassle. Some people don’t understand however that if they turn on their wireless router in a plug and play fashion with its default configuration, they would be offering a public service – free internet access to their neighbors 🙂

For years now, I always see a neighbor’s UNSECURED wireless network ( using the default name of the router manufacturer) when I do “view available wireless networks” from my laptop. I was kidding my wife that maybe we should cancel our internet service because it looks like our neighbor doesn’t plan to get educated any time soon 🙂 Well, not quite. For all I know he providing free internet access on purpose and spoofing on our privacy 😉 So I told my wife never to do internet banking or online purchase on our neighbor’s wireless network and always do it on ours which is secure. The rule of thumb when activating your wireless router is to install the highest level of encryption between the router and your devices. This ensures that only your devices can authenticate to your router. You can also add further security by MAC filtering and that means allowing only the MAC addresses of your wireless devices to connect. You can also turn off the broadcasting of our SSID or your network name to the airwaves so that no one sees your network. Only your devices that know your network name can connect. With these three options which are not difficult to configure, your network will be fairly secure but of course, never impregnable to the willing hacker. 😯

Last week, I took my laptop to the office for some software upgrade. I felt like browsing the net out of our corporate network so I searched for an unsecured wireless access point in the neighborhood I can ride on and  this iswhat I found. Strange that someone would deliberately advertise his wireless access point as FREE . I can understand that he’s pretty pissed with the wireless network provider judging from his language 🙂 but man, would you ever trust the dude’s network? 😉

KRIS PROTECTING HER TERRITORY AND GOING NUTS

In these times of recession, the cruise business had suffered a setback hence cruise prices have dropped but this didn’t stop a cruise line from banning a cougar club – a bunch of older women looking for younger men to date – from boarding its ships. What might be the relevance of this news ? Perhaps not much but read on anyways 🙂
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