Wireless networks are easy to crack

Security firm McAfee warns wireless networks are vulnerable to hackers' attacks, even if encryption is enabled.

Foundstone - a unit under McAfee - recommends that tools to crack WEP and WPA encryption help hackers organize attacks on wireless networks that are easily found on the Internet. In particular, some versions of Linux operating systems have been pre-configured to perform such attacks.

The attacker does not need to have a lot of knowledge to crack the wireless network's encryption system. Therefore, there are many potential vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.

WEP encryption can be used by hackers to "listen" to information packets exchanged between systems in the wireless network. When a number of packets of information need to be collected, it becomes a tool for cracking encryption and stealing the wireless network login password.

Meanwhile, WPA is being used to add more information packets into network traffic when a network component system conducts network logging - the process of creating connections.

Foundstone emphasizes the need to use a strong password to avoid detection and change the network key regularly. Foundstone said 10% of users still use one of the 50 most commonly used passwords.

Martin Pivetta, director of development management at McAfee, said the decision of the company to announce the security issue is to create a sense of security in the user community.

Hoang Dung