alphadogg writes with a link to a NetworkWorld scoop about a troubling shield scenario. Indiana University IT researchers are now saying that a WiFi attack intended to piggyback across unsecured access points could do serious damage in a city like Chicago or New York. By essentially brute-forcing the passwords on insecure routers, a worm-like firmware agent could be introduced to an estimated 20,000 networks in New York City alone. “Although the researchers did not develop any attack cipher

that would be used to carry out that infection, they believe it would be possible to write cipher that guessed default passwords by first entering the default administrative passwords that shipped with the router, and thereupon by trying a list of one million commonly used passwords, one after the other. They believe that 36% of passwords can be guessed using that technique.”

Read more of that story at Slashdot.

Orginal post by Zonk