War Drive in Provo

Since the Home Depot and TJ Max incidents there has been a lot of talk about wireless security at retail stores. It was insecure wireless networks at these two stores that allowed hackers to gain access to the "secure" internal corporate network. I was curious about this and decided to see for myself, except I decided to look at private home networks instead. I used my Orinoko gold card and Net stumbler to conduct my experiment. I drove through some of the residential areas of Provo, Utah counting the number of secure vs. insecure access points. I did the same in Idaho falls, Idaho. I was amazed to find that in Provo 46% of the access points had no security enabled and in Idaho falls 51% of the access points had no security enabled. The statistics may vary, but I think they are quite telling. Something really needs to be done to help protect the general public. (Note: I did not attempt to access any of the networks in this test. That would be unethical and potentially illegal.)