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AirDefense reveals wireless-security flaws during NRF
January 16, 2008
NEW YORK — AirDefense, a wireless LAN security company, unveiled results from its wireless airwave monitoring on Monday, Jan. 14, at the annual National Retail Federation Convention & Expo.
"It is evident that the majority of companies exhibiting are not taking wireless security seriously or there would be a much higher percentage of 'bullet proof' encryption practices in place protecting APs," said Richard Rushing, chief security officer of AirDefense.
AirDefense discovered less than 10 percent of the 458 access points in use at NRF were using 'bullet proof' encryption such as WPA2. In fact, nearly 60 percent of APs were using wired equivalent privacy, the weakest protocol for wireless-data encryption, which can be compromised in minutes. In spite of that, it remains in wide use.
While monitoring the wireless LAN traffic throughout the day Monday, AirDefense also found that nearly 80 percent of the 1,693 wireless devices such as laptops, PDAs, phones and vendor PCs were susceptible to "Evil Twin" types of attacks.
"Evil Twins" are the wireless version of email phishing scams, a technique whereby an attacker tricks victims into connecting to a laptop or PDA by posing as a legitimate hotspot.
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