Finns urge better Wi-Fi security after bank break-in

[Mark Holtz]

From InfoWorld:

Finns urge better Wi-Fi security after bank break-in

Finland called on its citizens to take more care securing their Wi-Fi networks after it emerged this week that about €200,000 ($245,400) had been stolen from a local bank using an unprotected home network.

The Helsinki branch of global financing company GE Money called on police to investigate the theft in June. The money, which has since been recovered, was stolen from one of GE Money's accounts at a local bank, said Jukkapekka Risu, investigating officer for the Helsinki police.

FULL ARTICLE HERE (http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/18/HNfinnwifisecurity_1.html)

Next thing you know, you will have to register your MAC address with the authorities to hook up to the Internet, followed by MAC address spoofing.

Now that I've thought of it, in two weeks, it will be a proposed as the latest in "law enforcement tools."

[Nick]

If I understand the facts of the case as reported in your article, the emphasis here is somewhat misleading, don't you think?The underlined portion of the quoted paragraph below is where the fault lies.Police now believe that the company's 26-year-old head of data security in Helsinki stole banking software from the company along with passwords for its bank account, Risu said. Accomplices then accessed the account from a laptop computer using an unprotected network at a nearby apartment building in Helsinki's Kallio district.A knowledgeable bank employee with such purloined information could have done this with or without an unprotected Wi-Fi network. Yes, whomever installed the Wi-Fi should have protected access, but this guy was an insider -- he probably would have had access, regardless.

Therein lies the the proponderance of the blame, not so much with the Wi-Fi.

[SimpleSimon]

Hmmm. MAC address spoofing. Someone should start doing that.

Oh - they have! A half-decent WiFi router has it built in so that you can hook to cable modem systems that "care" about it. Ran into one not long ago, but I'm too old and been doing too many installs to remember the details - just that I had to set it in the router.