[ISN] Warchalking is theft, says Nokia

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 02:48:22 PDT

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    http://www.vnunet.com/News/1135130
    
    By James Middleton 
    18-09-2002
    
    Geek 'pioneers' slammed as bandwidth thieves
    
    Warchalking, the technique of highlighting areas where wireless
    networks can be accessed freely, has been blasted as theft. And the
    practitioners of warchalking are being slammed as bandwidth thieves in
    an advisory issued by mobile and wireless vendor Nokia.
    
    Over the last few months, geeks have been drawing chalk symbols on
    walls and pavements in cities to mark points where signals from nearby
    office wireless networks can be tapped into to access the internet.
    
    The initial hysteria was over security, when it emerged that
    warchalkers may also be freely browsing corporate networks and
    accessing private company information. Now Nokia has raised the
    stakes.
    
    "Data privacy is at stake, and so is data integrity," the firm said.  
    "But the little-talked-about issue of bandwidth-robbing by these
    warchalkers should not be ignored.
    
    "While the warchalkers maintain they are not trying to hack networks,
    they are using a resource which they haven't paid for."
    
    Sitting outside an office and using a company's wireless network to
    surf the web means that the perpetrator has established an IP address
    and is using bandwidth - reducing the bandwidth available to the
    company. "This is theft - plain and simple," said Nokia.
    
    Another problem that has presented itself in recent weeks is that of
    'warspamming'. Simply by logging into an unprotected wireless network
    and finding an open simple mail transfer protocol port, spammers can
    send their messages to 10 million names while remaining completely
    anonymous, as well as avoiding heavy bandwidth costs.
    
    "If the connection is used often enough with data-hungry applications,
    the warchalkers could steal enough bandwidth to reduce the performance
    of the company's applications, resulting in a poor end-user experience
    and potentially even denial of service. For a business, this is
    unpalatable," said Nokia.
    
    
    
    
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