The clueless fucks at KPMG UK have decided to drum up a little security-hysteria consultancy biz by doing a “study” on open WiFi.
They created some open wireless nodes, and then logged what people who connected to these nets did. Sooprise, sooprise, most of them logged in and did nothing bad and then logged out, but 3.8/day apparently ran network probes, which KPMG characterized as an “attack.”
Of course, KPMG also believes that linking to its site is an attack, too. Among the surprising risks identified by KPMG’s crack squad of security consultants (available for $300/hour and up, no doubt) was that having more people on your network might reduce the bandwidth available to you. H0ly crap$0r! They are fsking 1337!
They also trot out the idea that open nets are “often” denoted with warchalking marks (something that is true only if “often” means “almost never, except as a kind of hipster joke or a marketing stunt”).
The “attackers” they logged “attacked” at the same time every day, which suggests that this might have been the same person walking past on the way home from work and trying out the net.
(via WiFi News!)