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Survey of Wireless Access Point Security
Voisin M, Ghita BV, Haskell-Dowland PS (Dowland PS)
Proceedings of the Fourth Security Conference 2005, Las Vegas, USA, 30-31 March, 2005
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The development of wireless networks has introduced a number of security issues inherent to
the communication medium and to the different security approaches available. While WEP
encryption is widely accepted as insecure, it remains one of the easiest to use and most
widespread wireless security mechanisms ? this is unsurprising as it is provided with most
802.11 wireless network equipment. In order to assess wireless access point security, a
survey was conducted with a handheld device and wardriving software with the aim of
covering a part of the city of Plymouth. While the results were insufficient to link wireless
LAN security with demographic information, they provide a global picture of the spread of
wireless technology mostly concentrated in the city centre and confirm the fact that many
wireless access points are used ?out of the box? with default settings which are, or were until
recently, not using any encryption.

Voisin M, Ghita BV, Haskell-Dowland PS (Dowland PS)