Survey of Wireless Access Point Security

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