http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/47290-1.html By Joab Jackson GCN.com 10/03/08 Jetsetting federal workers should be careful about how they use the Internet connections supplied by hotels, as most are not secured properly, according to a new study from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. "[H]otels in the U.S. are generally ill-prepared to protect their guests from network security issues," concluded the study [1], titled "Hotel Network Security: A Study of Computer Networks in U.S. Hotels." One hundred forty-seven hotels responded to a written survey sent out by the researchers, asking about each hotel's network infrastructure. In addition, the researchers paid a visit to 46 hotels in person in order to surreptitiously scan their networks. The hotels surveyed ranged from family-oriented hotels to those serving more of a business clientele. They had found that 20 percent of hotel networks use simple hub topologies, in which every packet from every user gets broadcast to every other user. This is an unsecured network, the researchers warned. "The key problem with a hub is that it simply repeats any information that is sent to it. ... In an ideal situation, only the transmissions that are associated with your computer would come back to you," the report states. An interloper could simply set his network card to save all the packets it is sent, not merely those designated to go to that computer's address. [1] http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14928.html [...] __________________________________________________ Register now for HITBSecConf2008 - Malaysia! With a new triple-track conference featuring 4 keynote speakers and over 35 international experts, this is the largest network security event in Asia and the Middle East! http://conference.hackinthebox.org/hitbsecconf2008kl/Received on Sun Oct 05 2008 - 23:20:17 PDT
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