NY Times Discovers The Wi-Fi Boom
Is there any major news organization that hasn’t done their “hey, look at this WiFi stuff” article yet? The latest is the NY Times which has the typical article about how WiFi is taking off, with a bit more focus on places that are offering free public WiFi. They bring up all the standard issues these articles all like to mention – but misses the big one that they all seem to skip: very few people are talking about security for people using the WiFi systems. While it’s common to talk about security to keep people from getting on the network, no one pays attention to the fact that most things people do online on a WiFi network are easily sniffable by anyone else. As an associated article, though, the NY Times has Glenn Fleishman explain the WiFi alphabet soup, for those of you who haven’t got all the different 802.11x letters straight. He explains the a, b, and g that most people know about already, but also clues folks in on things like i and e. He also does a good job bringing up the various issues associated with each. A very good summary.
