The coffee shop router taught me more than 3 years of forums

Last Tuesday I was at a coffee shop in Portland waiting on a repair estimate. I noticed their guest WiFi was wide open, no password, no splash page, nothing. The barista told me they set it up 2 years ago and never touched it. I checked the router IP and the admin panel had the default login still active. I spent 10 minutes showing her how to lock it down, changed the password, turned off WPS, and renamed the network. That same week I read a post about a guy who got his bank drained because a coffee shop network was sniffing traffic. It made me realize how many small businesses are sitting ducks with zero clue. How do you convince a shop owner to care when they think security is just antivirus?

1 comments

1 Comment

barnes.brian22d ago

My buddy runs a small bookstore and had the exact same setup. Some kid came in with a laptop, pulled up the router admin page in like two minutes right in front of him and showed him every device on the network. Scared him straight, now he updates passwords monthly.