AirDefense is one of the more respected companies producing wireless LAN security software. AirDefense performed a research experiment at the recent Networld+Interop conference in Las Vegas. Their monitoring software scanned for vulnerabilities and network attacks during the conference producing some astonishing results:

AirDefense noted an increase in unsecured connections to Hotspots, up three percent from 18 percent yesterday. The majority of connections continued to be created for email, file transfer protocol, instant messaging and Telnet.

"The increase in malicious activity was likely due to more free time by the attendees and the frustration of attendees not being able to get out to the Internet," said [chief security officer of AirDefense Richard] Rushing.

Additional AirDefense research discovered the following wireless LAN and Bluetooth risks and threats on day two:

- 189 separate attacks on different devices
- 112 separate MAC spoofing attacks
- 89 Denial of Service attacks
- 42 authentication attacks, likely due to brute force attacks or misconfigured clients
- 20 separate AirSnarf attacks
- 4 separate Hotspotter attacks
- 3 large Ad-Hoc mesh networks were re-established on day two with an average of 10 stations connected.
- Another association was made with the Sear Service Toolbox (SST-PR-1) and the network was attacked twice
- One Virtual Routing Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) attack, a routing tool attack to redirect traffic
- 165 BlueJack attacks
- 12 Blue Snarf attacks

Jeez. That's a lot of free time.