Wi-Fi guidance becomes law in California

[800XL]

"California legislators have passed a law which will force makers of wireless internet equipment to include guidance on keeping data secure on wireless connections. The law now awaits signature by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

From 1 October 2007, manufacturers must place warning labels on all equipment capable of receiving Wi-Fi signals, according to the new state law. These can take the form of box stickers, special notification in setup software, notification during the router setup, or through automatic securing of the connection. One warning sticker must be positioned so that it must be removed by a consumer before the product can be used."

No shit, out of about 500 WAP's in my neighborhood, 172 are unsecured.

[TheCotMan]

Re: Wi-Fi guidance becomes law in California

No shit, out of about 500 WAP's in my neighborhood, 172 are unsecured.

Sounds like the World Wide Wardriving contest has really improved things.
(No, I am not being sarcastic; things were worse and this is an improvement. :-)

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Wi-Fi guidance becomes law in California

i've always held the belief that the following policy should be in effect... all WiFi equipment should ship completely disabled, such that the customer has to manually enter the configuration utility and turn the radio on... and furthermore all defaults should be blank (i.e. - there are no defaults, but rather people have to fill in their SSID, channel number, etc)

after that, if anyone goes through all that trouble and doesn't set a password or enable security, it should be presumed by the public (and recognized in a court of law) that the AP was intentionally deployed as open and accessible to the public. anytime you stumble (or anytime your O/S and or drivers do auto-scan) and come across an access point where you get connectivity (without cracking WEP or WPA) i'd like it if you were totally immune from any accusations of wrongdoing.

hell, if i were to setup a table and chairs in the middle of a public park and lay out a spread of food and fine drink, i wouldn't have any right to complain if i left it unnatended and then someone came along and enjoyed some. without even the most basic sign saying "please do not touch" it's just my feeling that people would naturally consider it to be public and free.

if wireless was not enabled out of the box but rather had to be manually started (yeah, learning curve blah blah... grandma can't get on AOL from the couch and share her recipie for bunt cake) then there'd be no excuse for anyone who failed to configure a password and any sort of encryption.

just my $0.02... of course a great part of this is motivated by the fact that in the future more and more mobile devices (i predict) will be TCP based and just function by roaming from one connection to the next as they pop up when you walk from street to street. the more open APs that there are, the better a modded WiFi VoIP phone will work.

[Z^2]

Re: Wi-Fi guidance becomes law in California

No shit, out of about 500 WAP's in my neighborhood, 172 are unsecured.

Just from my front porch 5 of the 12 I can see are unsecured.

[DaKahuna]

Re: Wi-Fi guidance becomes law in California

I guess the moral question is - should the uninformed be punished because they want to use wireless but do not have the knowledge necessary to ensure that it is set up correctly.

While my logical mind wants to agree with Deviant, there is a part of me (damn guilty subconscious) that says manufaturers should ship these types of systems with the default set to secure mode of operations and force the user to unsecure it.