Sunday, January 25, 2015

Hacking Wi-Fi is Child's Play - Now run out and find me a child.

The great Groucho Marx, in character, was reading a report and remarked that a 4-year-old child could understand it. So, he said, "run out and find me a 4-year-old child."

Betsy Davis isn't 4. She's 7, but it's still pretty impressive that a computer-savvy 7 year old could Google the information she needed in order to hack into a public Wi-Fi system in a little under 11 minutes. Fortunately, Betsy is not a criminal hacker, but was enlisted as a part of a security experiment to show how easy it is to hack into such network and steal information from unwary people.

Many people assume that the Wi-Fi that they're using is secure, but this isn't always the case.
 (more)

The actual quote as reported by NPR...
In the Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup, there's a scene in which Groucho's Rufus T. Firefly, the newly installed leader of Freedonia, receives a report from the Treasury Department. "I hope you'll find it clear," says the minister of finance. "Clear?" replies Firefly incredulously. "Why, a 4-year-old child could understand this report." Then he pauses for a beat: "Now run out and find me a 4-year-old child. I can't make head or tail of it."