GUEST BLOG: Martin Lethbridge from WatchGuard Technologies explores the risks of ubiquitous wireless and provides some tips for creating a secure hotspot
Our list of basic needs includes food, shelter, water and energy. But if you ask people what else they could not live without, chances are they would put Wi-Fi near the top of the list. Guest Wi-Fi has become a ubiquitous offering across many sectors. In the hospitality industry, travellers now rank free Wi-Fi access as their number one criterion in selecting a hotel.
The drive to ubiquitous Wi-Fi is also being driven by mobile operators using ‘hand-over’ to W-Fi networks as a way of supplementing limited spectrum to meet the demand for capacity, along with the fast-growing Internet of Things. Depending on who you believe, the number of connected devices – ranging from fridges and lightbulbs to home security systems and cars – will be anything up to 20 billion by 2020.
According to iPass, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots is predicted to grow from 23 million in 2014 to almost 300 million in 2018. But this increasing demand for anytime, anyplace connectivity, means that we are inclined to jump onto Wi-Fi hotspots at cafes, hotel, airports or company guest networks, with only passing concerns about security. As a result, this has created a perfect hunting ground for attackers.
Hotspots that require no passwords are open, using no encryption meaning that anyone with a simple packet sniffer can potentially pick up your login credentials to sensitive websites and applications. Hotspots that require a ‘password of the day’ are encrypted but a sophisticated Wi-Fi attacker can exploit this and decrypt the traffic with ease using easily-available Wi-Fi hacking toolkits. Hotspots that invite us to log in using social network credentials are increasingly popular as they allow businesses to use demographic information such as age, gender and occupation to target personalised content and advertisements. And of course, the risks from hotspots are further compounded because access devices are typically personal and unmanaged by Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems that can enforce security policies.
Top Eight Wi-Fi risks
Wi-Fi Password Cracking
Wireless access points that still use older security protocols such as WEP, make for easy targets because these passwords are notoriously easy to crack.
Rogue Hotspots
Nothing physically prevents a cyber criminal from enabling a foreign access point near your hotspot with a matching SSID that invites unsuspecting customers to log in. Users that fall victim to the rogue access point are susceptible to a malicious code injection that often goes unnoticed.
Evil Twins
It’s possible to mimic a hotspot using portable hardware such as The Pineapple, which is small enough to be stored in a back pack and costs as little as £150. This pretends to be the genuine Wi-Fi connection – so when an unsuspecting user connects, they are actually connecting to a hacking device.
Planting Malware
Customers who join a guest wireless network are susceptible to unknowingly walking out with unwanted malware, delivered from bad-intentioned neighbouring users. A common tactic used by hackers is to plant a backdoor on the network, which allows them to return at a later date to steal sensitive information. There are common hacking toolkits to scan a Wi-Fi network for known vulnerabilities and exploit them in various ways. In the hotel industry, security researchers reported vulnerabilities in many hotel Wi-Fi routers.
Data Theft
Joining a wireless network puts users at risk of losing private documents that may contain highly sensitive information to cyber thieves who opportunistically intercept data being sent through the network. In retail environments, attackers focus their efforts on extracting payment transaction details such as credit card numbers, customer identities and mailing addresses.
Eavesdropping
Guests run the risk of having their private communications intercepted, or packet sniffed, by cyber snoops while on an unprotected wireless network
Inappropriate and Illegal Usage
Businesses offering guest Wi-Fi risk playing host to a wide variety of illegal and potentially harmful communication. Adult or extremist content can be offensive to neighbouring users and illegal downloads of protected media leave the business susceptible to copyright infringement lawsuits.
Bad Neighbours
As the number of wireless users on the network grows, so does the risk of a pre-infected client entering the network. Mobile attacks, such as Android’s Stagefright, can spread from guest to guest, even if victim zero is oblivious to the outbreak.
Avoiding the security threats
There are best practices, which will help secure your Wi-Fi network. The first is to implement the latest WPA2 Enterprise (802.1x) security protocol wherever possible; it’s one of the hardest encryption methods to crack. All Wi-Fi traffic should also, at a minimum, be inspected for viruses and malware, including zero day threats and advanced persistent threats. Application ID and control will monitor and optionally block certain risky traffic, while web content filtering will prevent unsuspecting users from accidentally clicking a hyperlink that invites exploitation, malware and backdoors to be loaded into your network.
Other measures include using strong passwords and changing them regularly; scanning for rogue Access Points (Aps) and whitelisting MAC addresses when possible. Finally, narrowing the Wi-Fi range will also reduce your risks.
The speed of Wi-Fi adoption has led to a disconnect between access and security. Many early APs and corresponding management systems focused purely on getting clients to connect with limited attention to protecting users and their data. But the security industry is now driving secure Wi-Fi solutions by extending physical network safeguards to wireless networks and also providing better network visibility to overcome a major security blind-spot. There is no longer any excuse for providing unsecure Wi-Fi and we shouldn’t have to feel we are living dangerously whenever we log on to a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Visit WatchGuard at Wi-Fi Now 2016 in London, October 25-27 or go to www.watchguard.com
iPass
From the right: Gary Griffiths (President & CEO, iPass), Karen Oosthuizen (Head of Sales and Marketing, Purdicomv) and Claus Hetting (CEO, Wi-Fi NOW).
]]>Project Isizwe
The winner of the Best Wi-Fi Innovation Award categori is:
Qualcomm
From the right: Claus Hetting (CEO, Wi-Fi NOW), James Devine (CIO, Project Isizwe), Rob Jenkins (Director European Sales,Qualcomm)
]]>Airties and Waoo
The winner of the Best Wi-Fi Startup Award category is:
XCellAir
From the right: Peter White (Judge), Claus Hetting (CEO, Wi-Fi NOW), Todd Mersch (Founder & Executive VP, XCellAir), Ian Challinor (EVP & GM Europe, AirTies) & Jorgen Stensgaard (CEO, Waoo)
]]>
We’re delighted that so many great Wi-Fi companies have chose to enter the Wi-Fi NOW Awards – and we’re even more delighted to be able to announce the shortlisted nominees for our 5 categories.
But before that let me say this: It has been an extremely tight race with the top entrants scoring within a few percent of each other.
Also huge thanks to our judges including our substitute judge Jan R. Stenmo who stepped in on short notice because Dean Bubley had other commitments.
The nominees in each category are:
For Best In-Home Wi-Fi Product:
- Google Wi-Fi
- AirTies & Waoo
- Ignition Design Labs
- XCellAir
For Best Wi-Fi Startup:
- XCellAir
- KodaCloud
- Cucumber Tony
Best Wi-Fi Innovation Award:
- Airangel
- Boingo Wireless
- Qualcomm
Wi-Fi NOW Affordable Connectivity Award:
Best Wi-Fi Service Provider Award:
- AirTies & Waoo
- Boingo Wireless
- iPass
The winners will be announced and celebrated at Wi-Fi NOW International in London on October 25-27! See our program for more details.
]]>
Guest blog By David Theodore, Theodore Wireless
Okay, so MAYBE that’s not happening, but if you’re a WISP, then suing isn’t so much in your vernacular as “colocation interference”, “signal to noise” and “side lobes.” But I’m here to tell you that there’s a solution to those nasty terms, and it will propel your growth and make your customers happy.
The issue is pollution in the RF spectrum, and here I’m talking about 5GHz—the most prolific offender. I could pull an “Inconvenient Truth” on you and show you some scary charts and graphs about what’s going to happen if we don’t get wise about our RF ecosystem, but you already know this.
It’s in the rising noise floor where your antennas are colocated. It’s impacting your growth and delivering less bandwidth to users. And of course it’s not just your antennas noising up the spectrum. It’s everyone else’s too.
The good news is that there’s a simple and elegant fix in a “symmetrical horn” antenna that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. It comes from RF elements (small “e”), a company at the geographic midpoint of Europe; Slovakia to be exact. Oh what, not Silicon Valley? Well for my California friends, remember when people thought that great wine only came from France?
The beauty of RF elements’ horn antennas.
I’ve never seen a sector antenna that wasn’t a cheap looking plastic rectangle, but these horn antennas—also sectors—are crafted of aluminum and stainless, making them as durable as they are distinctive. You might even say the antennas are overbuilt, except that you’re hardly paying for it. There are seven models, ranging from 30-90° in 10° steps, and they retail for a mere $99 to $120. Shipping could cost you more than the product.
You’ll also notice that these horn antennas are 1/4 the size of a traditional panel, so you’re reducing wind load and saving costly tower space. It’s skipping ahead to tell you this, but you can actually split wide traditional sectors into a few smaller horns and service several times the customer base from each tower.
RF elements horn antennas snap onto most major radio brands (e.g., Ubiquiti, MikroTikand Cambium) with a patented TwistPort
connector that eliminates coax connections. The mechanical interface couldn’t be more elegant, not to mention that signal loss in the connection is so low as to be undetectable. And literally, you can install these horns with a single hand.
Now for the best part–performance.
First I’ll draw a comparison with traditional sector antennas. Hardly anyone would argue that they’re sloppy as hell. They cast wider beams and generate more gain than necessary, sending and receiving signals miles beyond their intended targets, generating huge side lobes. These antennas were fine for a young industry, but if we’re talking of going from hundreds of thousands of APs to millions in the U.S. alone, then we all need to start playing nice with our 5GHz radios. That’s where RF elements horn antennas can make a world of difference.
Horn antennas are all about sustainable growth. All of the signal is focused at the intended target—and I mean all of it, because the best part of these antennas is that they produce no side lobes. You’ll never hear higher praise than from WISPs who were suffering colocation interference that was impacting subscriber bandwidth and limiting growth.
With horn antennas, colocation interference is gone.
Check out this comparison of side lobe patterns. Note how the traditional sector bleeds signal everywhere. That’s your business bleeding, too:
What’s also interesting, is that RF elements is making us all more aware of the importance of the antenna, where all too often the emphasis is almost entirely on the radio. Antennas can no longer be an afterthought. Signal quality isn’t all about the radio. In fact, as soon as you bring a horn antenna into the mix you see a dramatic improvement in signal to noise, translating to wider channel space and more bandwidth. Of course no one can give you a number, sight unseen, but I’ve talked to WISPs whose signal quality gained by more than 10dB as the noise floor dropped proportionately.
Here’s another interesting thing. By “symmetrical”, it means that these horn antennas project a beam that’s precisely the same height and width, helping considerably when you’re reaching uphill destinations.
Symmetry is Good.
RF elements freaks out some WISPs by advising that less power is better. Counter-intuitive? No, brilliant.
Increasing power with traditional sectors only introduces more noise. With horns, you propagate signals only where you need them, using precisely targeted sectors just for your coverage area.
Note how sectors barely overlap in this graphic of horn coverage. This is the future for a sustainable RF ecosystem:
WISPs: Horn antennas are a huge innovation and that’s no hype. They’re all about performance, and nothing less than the sustainability of your business and our industry as a whole.
The mobile industry wants to think that it’s a Wild West with license-exempt frequencies, and that we’re chasing pipe dreams. Let them think that, because while they’re hibernating for a 5G spec in 2020, we’re going to free millions of residences and small businesses from the bane of cable and DSL.
So do us all a favor—the industry, consumers and yourself. Check out RF elements’ web site and don’t even think about it. Buy a couple of horns and install them. When you’re done dancing a jig around your tower, let me know the details. 
#PreserveSpectrum #WirelessRenaissance
]]>
Some of us are still pinching our arms and rubbing our eyes to see if we’ve been reading this right: EU Commissioner Juncker announced in his annual ‘State of the Union’ speech in September that the EU plans to subsidise free City Wi-Fi across Europe to the tune of 120 million EUR by 2020.
But will it happen – and if so, will it boost the Wi-Fi industry in Europe? These are the looming questions. And there is still a lot of work for the Commission and its partners to do to get this off the ground.
A CAPEX-only Wi-Fi subsidy
First let’s get the facts straight: The EU wants to equip 6,000-8,000 cities with free Wi-Fi by subsiding equipment & installation (CAPEX) costs. If you work out the subsidy per city (assuming that the 8,000 is right) that would amount to about 15,000 EUR per city.
The cities are then expected to pay maintenance and ‘subscription costs’ themselves. The statement (see the PDF below) also says that communities need to commit to ‘very high Internet’ speeds.
Finally the proposal still has to pass both the EU Parliament and national ministers’ approvals. The statement also says that new city Wi-Fi networks cannot compete with existing Wi-Fi services, commercial or otherwise but the detailed policy documents have yet to be published.
Reputable sources have revealed to Wi-Fi NOW that the initiative is very likely to go ahead and that only the specifics (allocation across countries & details of the policy) are likely to change at this point.
Could free Wi-Fi be a catalyst for Wi-Fi industry growth in Europe?
This is pretty much what we know about this initiative at the moment. The good news of course is that this could be a boost to the Wi-Fi industry in Europe and not least provide underserved communities with free Internet access.
It’s no secret that City Wi-Fi in many cases has had a tough time getting off the ground due to lack of finances and fierce competition from ubiquitous mobile data. The challenge for this initiative could be that 15,000 EUR on average will give you about 2-4 outdoor Wi-Fi access points only. So either the new free Wi-Fi networks will be small or they will need more funding. Or cities could decide focus on indoor Wi-Fi deployments which would give them perhaps 8-12 access points to work with.
The scheme likely to stimulate job creation at some level and – with some creativity and thoughtful effort – would create a new platform for more public bodies to enter the Digital Age. And yes, there are communities in the EU that are underserved by service providers of any kind. Not everything in the EU is the land of plenty, as many seem to believe.
Wi-Fi NOW support
For what it’s worth, at Wi-Fi NOW we have pledged our full support of this proposal and we will do everything in our power to support it. Now there will of course be companies and individuals (especially in the cellular industry) who will resist this tooth and nail and likely spend large sums of money on lobbying against it both nationally and at the EU level.
But remember this: In the grand scheme of things 120 million EUR – or a mere 15,000 EUR in equipment subsidy per community – is a small amount. Cellular is a trillion-dollar global industry that should comfortably be able to accommodate this with no losses of significance.
At the same time, the fixed telcos will likely benefit from the backhaul services that will be needed to support community Wi-Fi.
Meet the European Commission at Wi-Fi NOW London Oct. 25-27
We’re delighted to announce that the European Commission is joining us at Wi-Fi NOW International in London this October 25-27 to give us a full overview of what free EU Wi-Fi is all about. For more see this link and make sure you register to join us in London!
/Claus.
Below: The official statement on the ‘WiFi4EU’ initiative as released by the EU Commission in September 2016.
It’s a nagging problem in millions of households around the world: Great Wi-Fi in the living room and crappy Wi-Fi everywhere else. Now Google is throwing some weight behind a fix to this problem. Just yesterday, Google launched its new Wi-Fi router product called simply ‘Google WiFi’ and it comes packed with some pretty nifty features.
The first is the look: Google’s done a great job in creating a hockey-puck shaped pod that will look good anywhere in your home. The new device supports 802.11ac Wave 2 with 2×2 MIMO – so the performance should be right up there with the best.
The units hook up to form a self-optimizing mesh and not only that: Google says that the connection (for your smartphone, for example) will seamlessly transition between units as you walk around your home. Very nicely done, Google. For all the details read more here.
So why is Google getting deeper into the router business? Well – the idea is not new for Google who launched the OnHub router about a year ago. At Wi-Fi NOW USA in Washington, D.C. in April, Google’s own Trond Wuellner explained it like this: When 80% of traffic on Google sites and services is served up via Wi-Fi, of course Google is interested in making sure that home Wi-Fi is as good as it possibly can get.
But meshed in-home routers are also a big business opportunity in its own right, maybe even one of the biggest in consumer electronics right now. By our reckoning the right fix to the nagging bad home Wi-Fi problem could reach into the billions of dollars in market value.
For all the details and the inside story, don’t miss Google’s own Sanjay Noronha at Wi-Fi NOW London this October 25.27. Get your ticket here!
/Claus
]]>