Eideard

German citizens are responsible for the security of their own private wireless connections, a court has ruled.

The ruling comes after a musician sued the owner of a network connection that had been used to illegally download and file-share music.

The owner had proof that the householder was on holiday at the time but the court ruled that the network should have been password-protected.

The court’s verdict was that the owner could be fined up to 100 euros. “Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,” the court in Karlsruhe said.

While it did not find the owner guilty of actual copyright violation the ruling was that the person must take a degree of responsibility for their connection being used to break the law…

Even if there isn’t a legal issue, there could still be an issue if your broadband provider or package has a limit on how much you can use your connection or terms and conditions about how it should be used.”

Har!

Good thing we needn’t worry about this happening in the GOUSA. Americans aren’t responsible for anything, you know.

Researchers say they have created a special kind of paint which can block out wireless signals.

It means security-conscious wireless users could block their neighbours from being able to access their home network – without having to set up encryption.

Of course, this should read, “in addition to encryption” to keep the Feds from beaming directly into your network.

The paint contains an aluminium-iron oxide which resonates at the same frequency as wi-fi – or other radio waves – meaning the airborne data is absorbed and blocked.

By coating an entire room, signals can’t get in and, crucially, can’t get out.

Developed at the University of Tokyo, the paint could cost as little as £10 per kilogram.

No doubt you can conjure up additional features and benefits.

No doubt.

You’re sitting in an airport lounge and seize the chance to check your e-mails before your flight departs. You log on and are tempted by a wireless Internet provider offering free Internet access. So, do you take it?

Security experts warn that hackers may be masquerading as free public Wi-Fi providers to gain access to the laptops of unsuspecting travelers. All it takes, they say, is a computer program downloaded from the Internet, an open access point and a user who has ignored basic security advice.

“The difficulty for travelers is differentiating between a good Internet access hotspot and a rogue, or somebody trying to actually glean credentials from you. The issue is that you don’t necessarily know the difference between a good and a bad one,” computer security expert Sean Remnant told CNN.

In 2008, AirTight Networks dispatched a number of so-called “white hat” hackers to 27 airports around the world to test the vulnerability of their Wi-Fi systems. They found that 80 percent of the private Wi-Fi networks tested were open or poorly protected.

The wireless security company also found that basic services at several airports, including baggage handling systems, were vulnerable to hackers. Operators were using Wired Equivalent Privacy, known as WEP, which was found to provide inadequate protection to hackers as early as 2001…

The original survey conducted by AirTight Networks found the most common name for rogue Wi-Fi points was “Free Public Wi-Fi…”

And it’s not just happening at airports. The rapid spread of Wi-Fi networks to cafes, hotels and even entire cities is providing hackers with more opportunities to ply their trade.

I expect the number of unsophisticated, inexperienced folks getting their first computer – taking a netbook off to school – has to provide an unlimited open season for the crooked.

It’s hard to believe that we’re approaching the two-year anniversary of the original iPhone. I don’t think it is hyperbole to say that the iPhone has completely transformed the mobile computing space. This is especially clear when evaluating mobile Wi-Fi usage data.

Today, Boingo Wireless released a data snapshot of mobile device access on its airport network of Wi-Fi hotspots. According to Boingo, airports are the number one venue for Wi-Fi access worldwide, so they make for a good data point when evaluating Wi-Fi usage.

For the past 24-months, Boingo has tracked its airport Wi-Fi data and the increase in mobile device uptake is astonishing. It’s also driven almost entirely by the iPhone and the iPod touch.

Since May 2007, mobile device usage has gone from accounting for 0.1% of Boingo’s airport Wi-Fi connections to 26.1%. In two years, the smartphone has gone from a non-entity to accounting for 1/4 of all of Boingo’s connections.

Boingo has also tracked what type of devices associate with Boingo operated airport Wi-Fi hotspots. In 2007, the first year the iPhone was available, the iPhone only accounted for 1% of all mobile devices. Windows CE (Windows Mobile), was the leader in 2007, with 66% of mobile device connections. In 2008, the iPhone accounted for 51.7% of all mobile devices, with the iPod touch coming in second with 42.4%. For the first five months of 2009, the iPhone has taken an astounding 89.2% of all mobile devices accessing Boingo’s airport hotspots. The iPod touch has dipped to 4.7%. I talked to Jeremy Pepper from Boingo PR and he said that they think the drop in the price of the iPhone is the reason iPod touch access figures have dipped, with the iPhone taking its place.

Although these figures are only from one Wi-Fi access source, the number of users that access Wi-Fi at the airport provides what I consider a good sample for data collection. In two years, not only has the mobile access space increased 261x, the iPhone OS accounts for nearly 94% of all mobile connections.

No wonder every other phone manufacturer is desperately trying to play catch-up!

Cripes. Even I’m surprised. I have to chuckle over all the naysayers and geek whiners who predicted this product was a guaranteed fail.

You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.

That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge…

The rules came to attention this month when an FCC agent investigating a pirate radio station in Boulder, Colorado, left a copy of a 2005 FCC inspection policy on the door of a residence hosting the unlicensed 100-watt transmitter. “Whether you operate an amateur station or any other radio device, your authorization from the Commission comes with the obligation to allow inspection,” the statement says…

But if inspectors should notice evidence of unrelated criminal behavior — say, a marijuana plant or stolen property — a Supreme Court decision suggests the search can be used against the resident.

Of course. We all trust our government to be evenhanded and fair.

The topic of ISP data retention is up once again in the halls of Congress. A new bill, known as the “Internet SAFETY Act,” seeks to compel ISPs and anyone who hosts a Wi-Fi access point to log all information that could identify users, in order to assist police investigating child pornography. Actually two companion pieces of legislation – one working its way through the Senate as S.436, and the other through the House as H.R.1076. Their sponsors are Senator John Cornyn and Representative Lamar Smith, and both are republicans hailing from Texas.

“While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” said Cornyn in a Thursday press conference. “Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level.”

Both bills are virtually identical, and contain the same language. “[Providers] of an electronic communication service or remote computing service” will be required to retain “all records … pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address” for two years.

Observers interpret the law to mean anyone who runs a network that assigns users a temporary IP address, internal or external – which would cast ISPs like AT&T in the same lot as coffee shops and corporate networks using DHCP.

The last serious try at this crap came from the now absent and unlamented Alberto Gonzales. The Attorney General with a shallow memory – and an even shallower interpretation of civil liberties.

Ratnesh Kumar keeps his prototype soil sensors buried in a box under his desk. He hopes that one day farmers will be burying the devices under their crops. Kumar is leading an Iowa State University research team that’s developing transceivers and sensors designed to collect and send data about soil moisture within a field. Eventually the researchers are hoping the sensors will also collect data about soil temperature and nutrient content.

A major goal is to build small sensors (the prototypes are about 2 inches wide, 4 inches long and less than an inch thick) that can do their work entirely underground. The sensors won’t need wires or above-ground antennas, so farmers could work right over the top of them.

The sensors would also be able to report their locations. That would make it easy to find sensors if a plow were to move them or when batteries need to be replaced.

Kumar, an Iowa State professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the sensors are designed to be buried about a foot deep in a grid pattern 80 to 160 feet apart. The sensors would relay data along the grid to a central computer that would record information for researchers or farmers.

The sensors could help researchers understand precisely how water moves through a field. They could help them develop better models to predict crop growth and yield. And they could help them understand the carbon and nitrogen cycles within soils.

And those sensors could help farmers manage their nutrient and water resources. That could maximize yields and profits. And it could minimize environmental impacts.

Folks who haven’t worked around modern agriculture – even the apocryphal family farm – have no idea how much science and sensors, wi-fi and web-enabled communications are involved.

Hopefully this prototype system will lead to fewer additives and healthier food for us all.

While many net users in developed nations can get online pretty much anywhere thanks to reliable electricity and telecoms networks, the same is not true in developing nations where power sockets and fixed line links can be few and far between.

A project at the University of Sao Paulo aims to overcome one of these hurdles by using the sun to power a self-contained wi-fi access point.

The project is the creation of Professor Marcelo Zuffo, Interactive Electronics Coordinator at the University of Sao Paulo, and prototypes are being tested on lamp posts dotted around the institution’s campus. “It was designed to work in an open environment, like a forest, a park or a low-income neighbourhood.”

“We have a solar panel, a cheap motorcycle battery and a circuit that is responsible for energy management.

Rather than rely on dedicated connections to make a link back to the core of the net, the self-contained units form an ad hoc network and pass data between each other to connect to the larger internet.

“We can have up to two days of full internet coverage and our goal is to increase that to 10 days – so that in the rainy season and the winter – you can have the internet for free,” said Prof Zuffo.

Your own neighborhood cloud.

I can think of a number of community situations where this might work really well. The design premise of affordability and using off-the-shelf components – regardless of original design intent – is a plus that any engineer will appreciate.

The growth of shared Wi-Fi and other wireless computer networks has increased the risk of eavesdropping on Internet communications, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and College of Engineering have devised a low-cost system that can thwart these “Man-in-the-Middle” (MitM) attacks.

The system, called Perspectives, also can protect against attacks related to a recently disclosed software flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS), the Internet phone book used to route messages between computers.

The researchers have incorporated Perspectives into an extension for the popular Mozilla Firefox v3 browser that can be downloaded free of charge at www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/firefox.html.

Perspectives employs a set of friendly sites, or “notaries,” that can aid in authenticating Web sites for financial services, online retailers and other transactions requiring secure communications. By independently querying the desired target site, the notaries can check whether each is receiving the same authentication information, called a digital certificate, in response. If one or more notaries report authentication information that is different than that received by the browser or other notaries, a computer user would have reason to suspect that an attacker has compromised the connection…
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Chrysler is poised to offer in its 2009 models a new entertainment option for the children: Wi-Fi and Internet connectivity. The problem is that the entire car becomes a hotspot. The signals won’t be confined to the Nintendos in the rear seat; front-seat occupants will be able to stay online, too.

Bad idea. As drivers, we have done poorly resisting the temptation to move our eyes away from the road to check e-mail or send text messages with our cellphones. Now add laptops…

On Chrysler’s Web site, Keefe Leung, a manager in the company’s advanced connectivity technology group, explains the rationale for the service: “People are connected in their lives everywhere today. They’re connected at home, they’re connected at the office, they’re connected at Starbucks when they go for a cup of coffee.” But, he says, “the one place that they spend a lot of time that they’re not connected is in their vehicle, and we want to bring that to them.”

Clearly, for safety reasons, Mr. Leung cannot condone use of the service by drivers. When he is shown in the videos demonstrating the service, called UConnect, he always occupies a rear seat.

When I asked him last week about possible misuse of the service by drivers, he said that…the company would provide instructions to owners about its intended use.

Let’s face it. Here’s a wonderful new opportunity to expand the ever-growing number of candidates for a Darwin Award.