A "honeypot" trap consisting of a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop is the latest weapon against drive-by hackers. Set up at the London headquarters of consultants KPMG, the laptop looks to the outside world like a simple wireless access point, but contains monitoring software . . .

A "honeypot" trap consisting of a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop is the latest weapon against drive-by hackers. Set up at the London headquarters of consultants KPMG, the laptop looks to the outside world like a simple wireless access point, but contains monitoring software designed to determine the level of illicit activity.

"We are trying to measure the number of wardrivers, and the level of attack they are attempting," said Michael van Strien of KPMG, revealing the device at the RSA security conference in Paris. He plans to publish some results in the next month or two, which will give an idea of the level of the much discussed threat of "wardriving", where hackers outside an office gain access to unsecured wireless access points. "We're looking at the number of hits and how many try to get network addresses," said van Strien.

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