Quarter of wireless networks left unprotected

A survey of six UK cities has found that just under a quarter of wireless networks are running without any security whatsoever.

Around half of nearly 40,000 networks scanned were protected by modern WPA or WPA2 encryption, just under 10,000 were not secured and the remainder were protected only by the relatively insecure WEP system.

The survey was conducted by driving around London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh and Cardiff scanning for wireless networks using freely available software and recording how many were protected by encryption.

In a separate experiment a fake public wireless hotspot was set up in each city in order to see how many users would open an insecure wireless connection to it. Almost 400 people across the six cities surveyed did so.

"When people think of hackers they tend to think of highly organised criminal gangs using sophisticated techniques to crack networks", said Jason Hart, who carried out the experiments on behalf of the insurance company CPP.

"However, as this experiment demonstrates, all a hacker requires is a laptop computer and widely available software to target their victims."

For a step-by-step guide to securing a home network, click here.