wireless networks - keep 'em secured!!!

last week I moved out of my apartment in the city to a rental house for a 6 week "holdover" period while my new house renovations get completed. For the first few days after moving I had to either use gprs or hop on to some anonymous doner's unsecured wireless network.

I got to thinking, even though it was very convenient for me, I could have done some serious damage to this guys systems with a simple packet sniffer or even a spam program.

The lesson is, if you run a wireless network, take 5 minutes to make sure you are running a secured, password protected network.

Another thing to remember - the stuff that gets downloaded through your connection by a neighbor could be CP and your account will have this info set as just your connection.

Yes, isn't wireless a CP lover's dream?

Michael

Stuff CP.

You could be the unlucky one and get some1 unleashing a huge international virus, or attacking the pentigon ect from YOUR CONNECTION.


Ekkk. Your gunu loose your front door when those feds come after you screaming and hitting you with nightsticks

I only use my wireless when im useing the laptop, so after I turn it right off

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chilihost

The lesson is, if you run a wireless network, take 5 minutes to make sure you are running a secured, password protected network.

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I *wish* it only took me five minutes. I am retarded about stuff like that, and since we live in a fairly underpopulated area with only a couple of neighbors who are women I didn't think it mattered. I finally noticed someone piggybacking on our connection, though, and tightened it up a little but it's still not very secure (doing the MAC address thing).

it took me about one minute. only thing is we didn't bother because AT&T told us it was secured already. they were very mistaken and we found someone was using our DSL so be sure and check to make sure your line is protected!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Trixie

I *wish* it only took me five minutes. I am retarded about stuff like that, and since we live in a fairly underpopulated area with only a couple of neighbors who are women I didn't think it mattered. I finally noticed someone piggybacking on our connection, though, and tightened it up a little but it's still not very secure (doing the MAC address thing).

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mac address spoofing is very easy to do. Google it.
I would take 10 minutes and setup WPA2 security (comes with 95% of all new routers, cards, etc, and most old ones are updatable via firmware at the manufacturers website).

DO NOT USE 'WEP' security for your home network. Again, doing a google of this will show you why.

You can crack 'any' wep password in 30 minutes tops. Again, do a google on this to see what I mean. Use WPA security at the very least, and last but not least do NOT use a dictionary word, or anything less than 21 characters for your passphrase on WPA


hope this helps.

Wow... Great info. Thanks for starting the post, Chilihost! I really didn't know that WEP was insecure and that there's WPA2. Thanks Daymare! It seems like things are changing by the month, so by the time I get one thing, something else has already developed! Can't keep up half the time!

Cheers,
Brian