Drive-by hacking: a 21st century crime

An era of corporate eavesdropping is upon us. And why? Because users are not properly implementing wireless local area networks (WLANs). Get used to hearing about it.

RSA Security drove through the City of London armed with no more than a laptop, a wireless network card and some clever software downloaded free from the internet recently, and found it could pick up the traffic on dozens of corporate WLANs, 'leaking' out of buildings.

That's not altogether surprising. Popular WLAN standards such as Wi-Fi - the snappily named IEEE 802.11b flavour - has a range of 60 to 200 metres, or up to 500 metres when boosted. Unlike cabled networks, which are hard to tap into physically (look out for those balaclava-wearing thieves with crocodile clips), WLANs are difficult to contain.

Now don't get us wrong. We think that's a good thing. The advantages of Ethernet speed with added flexibility and availability are not to be sneezed at. But rolled out and maintained in the wrong way, then these things become a danger.

The problem is that while regular networks now usually sit behind a range of firewall, anti-virus and other defences, WLANs are often exposed. RSA, unsurprisingly as an encryption specialist, points out that 67 per cent of its sample didn't use encryption.

The answer is user vigilance - and, yes, encryption. The technology itself is going to take off in a big way. From multinationals with hundreds of employees and dozens of access points to husband and wife teams sharing a DSL or cable modem connection to their home, it will be embraced.

And it's even noticeable now that in your average office IT hardware catalogue featuring Wi-Fi networks a major selling point has become, you guessed it, security.

Like we said, get used to hearing about drive-by hacking and the like - but get over it.