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Wi-Fi routers vulnerable to airborne viruses(New Scientist Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE viral infection that began in Cambridge, Massachusetts, somewhere between MIT and Harvard University, failed to cross the Charles River into Boston; in California, the San Francisco Bay stymied a similar attack. This was not a biological infection, but the first simulation of an airborne computer virus. It spread by hopping between wireless routers, which are more susceptible to viruses than computers, says Steven Myers of Indiana University in Bloomington. "We forget that routers are mini-computers. They have memory, they are networked and they are programmable." And since they aren't scanned for viruses, or protected by existing firewalls, they are easy targets. Myers knows of no actual router viruses, but says such a virus could steal credit-card numbers, make the router send out spam and block incoming security patches. Routers close enough together to communicate - less than 100 metres apart - could act as a vast network for viruses. Although routers don't usually communicate with each other, it would be easy enough for malicious hackers to use a virus to switch on that capability if the router's encryption system were weak, Myers says. To investigate how a router attack might play out, Myers and his colleagues used records on the location of Wi-Fi routers around Chicago, Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston and parts of Indianapolis to create a computer simulation. In each city, a virus hopped between routers that were within 45 metres of each other and lacked high-security encryption (www.arxiv.org/abs/0706.3146). They were surprised by how quickly the virus spread: tens of thousands of routers were infected in each city, most within 48 hours. The geography of the cities affected the spread, with rivers and bays forming "natural firewalls", Myers says. There are less drastic ways to protect your router than relocating to a river bank, he says. You could change the password from default on your router and enable its high-security WPA encryption scheme. However, Ross Anderson, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, UK, warns that the study highlights a broader problem. "Software is popping up everywhere - in your router, your phone, your microwave, not just your PC - and there is the potential to unleash mayhem." Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved. |