7. Expert, secure thy self

Posted on 17 Jun 2008 at 10:34

Gaffe rating: 184

You might imagine that, given the demographic of technology show attendees, these are probably among the safest places on the planet as far as networking is concerned. They are actually about as safe as a toaster in a swimming pool, as security experts Kaspersky discovered at the 2006 CeBIT trade fair in Hannover.

After secretly examining 300 wireless access points used by companies exhibiting in Germany, Kaspersky revealed 56% of them had no encryption at all, while the remaining 44% used the easily broken WEP protocol. Kaspersky also learned that hackers had installed fake access points at the InfoSecurity Europe show in London in an attempt to extract login and other data from visitors.

Of course, you should learn the lesson yourself and ensure your wireless network at home is protected by WPA encryption. But then even us security journalists can fail to practise what we preach. I once followed one on to a PC in the press office at InfoSecurity only to discover he had been checking his webmail. I know this because he hadn't cleared the browser cache. One click of the Delete Browsing History button would have prevented me from being able to access his Gmail archive...

Next: 6. Six-year-old girl hacks Parliament

The 10 worst security gaffes

Author: Davey Winder