Indian police crack down on unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots

Filed Under: Data loss, Law & order

Wi-fi hazard

Police in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) are reportedly on the hunt for poorly secured wireless connections, following an incident last year where hackers sent a warning about an imminent bombing from an innocent person's Wi-Fi connection.

At a conference in Mumbai last week, 80 policemen were taught about Wi-Fi connections and cybercrime and given the authority to order the owners of wireless routers to properly secure them with encryption and passwords.

A few months after the terror email which sparked off the increased interest in Wi-Fi security was sent, police arrested 31-year-old Mohammed Asghar Mansoor Peerbhoy, a Yahoo India software engineer, in relation to the emails.

There is an issue here for all of us with a wireless connection in our homes or in our offices. If they are not properly secured then they can be abused - perhaps the threat of terrorists using the connection is small, but there are many other criminals who might abuse your Wi-Fi link to cloak themselves when committing crimes, or to steal information from you.

If you haven't already done so, learn how to secure your Wi-Fi connection now.

About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.