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.
