[colug-432] Internet Census 2012 (Open ports by the millions).

[Rick Hornsby]

On Mar 22, 2013, at 16:45, Tim Randles <tim.randles at gmail.com> wrote:

> Locked wifi considered harmful
> 
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/open-wireless-movement
> 

I remember reading that and considering it.  My argument is simple: as has been discussed here previously, timewarner's service sucks. Typically, I can hardly stream a 2 minute YouTube video in 5 minutes and l'm the only one on the network.  I don't need anyone else on it too.

I'm also pretty sure that while you might be protected from criminal ramifications of someone using your connection, the telco may still hold you responsible for any AUP violations.  They may decide that you're in breach one of two ways - either for the activity itself, or for re-selling your residential connection (for free, but by letting others use it they could make the argument.)

That being said, I'm probably going to end up with FTTH in the next few months.  I'm planning to have a rate-limited open wifi available. If you're lost in a neighborhood 10 minutes north of the Kansas Speedway, you can use my connection to find your way.

> 
> On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 3:41 PM, Vince Herried <vherried at gmail.com> wrote:
>> A European friend sent me a link to this document.
>> The introduction reads:
>> 
>> 
>>> Two years ago while spending some time with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) someone mentioned that we should try the classic telnet login root:root on random IP addresses. This was meant as a joke, but was given a try. We started scanning and quickly realized that there should be several thousand unprotected devices on the Internet. 
>>> 
>>> After completing the scan of roughly one hundred thousand IP addresses, we realized the number of insecure devices must be at least one hundred thousand. Starting with one device and assuming a scan speed of ten IP addresses per second, it should find the next open device within one hour. The scan rate would be doubled if we deployed a scanner to the newly found device. After doubling the scan rate in this way about 16.5 times, all unprotected devices would be found; this would take only 16.5 hours. Additionally, with one hundred thousand devices scanning at ten probes per second we would have a distributed port scanner to port scan the entire IPv4 Internet within one hour.
>> 
>> 
>> Here is a link the the paper.
>> http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/paper.html
>> 
>> Do we believe it or not?
>> If this is true is there any wonder that we have so many news accounts of some sophisticated hacker
>> getting into secure accounts.
>> 
>> My own personal observation showed that huge numbers of  WIFI sites are still open.
>> When  I walk my neighborhood and see names like belkin54g, dlink, linksys, NETGEAR. I know I'm only a few steps 
>> away from another WIFI hot spot.  There is  some hope, it appears that most newer WIFI routers that folks get from their ISP are  password protected by default but all those old machines are still working just fine.  The ones the home owner  buys from Micro Center appear to be open. 
>> 
>> Has any one bought a WIFI router and found them to be password enabled by default.  A password based on
>> the serial number of the device maybe so one can't enter an account name and password directly from the owners manual.
>> 
>> If you want to gain access to for instance a linksys router, search the web for the account id and password.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Vince's outgoing mail address 
>> _______________________________________________
>> colug-432 mailing list
>> colug-432 at colug.net
>> http://lists.colug.net/mailman/listinfo/colug-432
> 
> _______________________________________________
> colug-432 mailing list
> colug-432 at colug.net
> http://lists.colug.net/mailman/listinfo/colug-432
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.colug.net/pipermail/colug-432/attachments/20130322/5a6dc520/attachment-0001.html