Features

60% of WiFi Networks Lack Protection

By Dilip Thomas

Panda Software has published a 56-page report on the “Security in Wireless Networks”, report by PandaLabs, highlighting the security shortcomings in WEP, the most widely used protocol in Wi-Fi environments, as well as underlining the relative reliability of other current systems, such as WPA or WPA-PSK. According to the survey, almost 60 percent of networks had no security system at all.

The study includes an introduction to wireless networks and a series of basic concepts, before describing the main security protocols, such as WEP and WPA and their main weaknesses. Similarly, the document looks at security in captive portals, used to regulate connections in open networks, such as airports, hotels or other public places.

The document (Requires Registration for downloading) presents the technical characteristics, on a security level, the most widely used standards, the attacks they must head off and the measures available for administrators to secure this type of network. However, it does not go into the details and neither does it cover all attacks and variants.