After fifteen minutes, Shipley's black Saturn has crawled through twelve blocks of rush hour traffic, and his jerry-rigged wireless hacking setup has discovered seventeen networks beaconing their location to the world. After an hour, the number is close to eighty. "These companies probably spend thousands of dollars on firewalls," says Shipley. "And they're wide open." . . .
After fifteen minutes, Shipley's black Saturn has crawled through twelve blocks of rush hour traffic, and his jerry-rigged wireless hacking setup has discovered seventeen networks beaconing their location to the world. After an hour, the number is close to eighty. "These companies probably spend thousands of dollars on firewalls," says Shipley. "And they're wide open."

Dramatic drops in hardware prices over the last year have made it enormously attractive and convenient for corporations and home user to go wireless, in particular with equipment built on the 802.11 standard - which was popularized with Apple's AirPort, and is now widely used on PCs. But computer security experts say that in the rush towards liberation from the tethers of computer cable, individuals and companies are opening the doors to a whole new type of computer intrusion.

"It's absolutely huge," says Chris Wysopal, also known as ""Weld Pond," director of research and development at Boston-based @Stake. The company added wireless auditing to their consulting menu approximately two months ago, after months of laboratory research convinced them that it was a grave problem. "802.11 is inherently less secure than other wireless technology, Wysopal says, "and the way it's being deployed makes it worse."

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