Redecorating With Flare

No, that is not a typo. Japanese researchers have discovered a new, anti-Wi-Fi paint that will keep your neighbors from leeching off your wireless:

Wireless security and encryption systems are fraught with problems and insecurity, and other methods to restrict your signal to a small area are cumbersome at best.

Enter a new solution: Anti-Wi-Fi paint.

The idea is simple: Use a special paint on walls where you don’t want wireless to pass through (say the exterior of your house). The secret is mixing aluminum-iron oxide particles in with the paint. The metal particles resonate at the same frequency as Wi-Fi and other radio waves, so signals can’t pass through the thin layer of pigment. Outsiders would simply be unable to access your wireless network, just as you, inside the house, won’t be able to interlope on anything beamed on the outside.

Developed by the University of Tokyo, the paint is said to be the first that can block radio frequency in higher spectra where Wi-Fi and other higher-bandwidth communications occur rather than just low-frequency wireless like FM radio. Most Wi-Fi technologies operate at 2.4GHz; the Tokyo paint can reportedly block frequencies all the way up to 100GHz, with a 200GHz-blocking paint now in the works. (Emphasis added)

Get the conspiracy theories dusted off, quick! One suspects that the elusive super-thermite may have finally been discovered.

(If you have not figured this out at this point, perhaps you are not aware of what, exactly, is used to make thermite. That would be aluminum and iron oxide. Or the same ingredients as are in the paint.)

One could, of course, put basic security on their wireless router without redecorating with potentially combustive substances. One could even shut off their router’s SSID broadcast so that the neighbors could not easily piggyback on the homeowner’s signals.

Apparently, that escaped the researchers. They would, it seems, rather address the “problem” with flare. Or flares.