Is your wireless secure? Not with WEP...
Categories: Computers and Networking
Chances are, if you've got a wireless router and you've "properly" secured your router so that your neighbors can't hijack your internet connection, you're using the Wired Equiavalent Privacy encryption method to secure your wireless network. That's WEP for short. Don't worry, I didn't know what it stood for either until today, I always assumed "Wireless Encryption Protocol"
Anyway, this weekend, some german security analysts figured out how to crack this encryption method - and not only that, it can be done by a standard PC in under 60 seconds.
http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/3292
So, if you've got a wireless router secured with WEP encryption - change it to something else. WPA, for example.
If you've got a wireless router without security... well, get some. Otherwise you're opening yourself up to someone sitting on the curb by your house and accessing your private data.
Anyway, this weekend, some german security analysts figured out how to crack this encryption method - and not only that, it can be done by a standard PC in under 60 seconds.
http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/3292
So, if you've got a wireless router secured with WEP encryption - change it to something else. WPA, for example.
If you've got a wireless router without security... well, get some. Otherwise you're opening yourself up to someone sitting on the curb by your house and accessing your private data.
Posted by rickroot at 12:06 PM | Link | 4 comments
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Re: Is your wireless secure? Not with WEP...
WPA2 is recommended. https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm is great for generating appropriately random keys. Disable SSID broadcast to make your network harder for wardrivers to find. MAC address filtering adds another degree of difficulty, just don't forget you set that up when you buy a new notebook! And don't forget to change the admin password on the router.
The Linksys WRT54GL is my favorite router. It's basically a 200MHz embedded Linux computer. They're better than the regular WRT54G's you'll find at most stores. I bought mine from Newegg. If you want to get creative there are third-party firmware distributions for it such as dd-wrt.com.
The Linksys WRT54GL is my favorite router. It's basically a 200MHz embedded Linux computer. They're better than the regular WRT54G's you'll find at most stores. I bought mine from Newegg. If you want to get creative there are third-party firmware distributions for it such as dd-wrt.com.
Posted by Brian Stretch on April 10, 2007 at 12:31 PM
Re: Is your wireless secure? Not with WEP...
explain "accessing your private data". They can use your internet connection, but unless you leave file shares or something else wide open on your network (or don't use SSL on your Banking site) - your private data is safe even if your WAP is wide open. Right now I can see 6 open networks from my living room - one of them is mine but I forget which :)
Posted by Dave on April 11, 2007 at 7:58 AM
Re: Is your wireless secure? Not with WEP...
If they're inside your network firewall, then it's a LOT easier for them to HACK into your computers.
Let's say you use gmail for email. Your username/password is sent over SSL, but the data of your email is NOT. If someone is inside your network firewall, then maybe they can use a packet sniffer to read your email.
How about the fact that probably the majority of people out there still have the default password on their router. If you're inside the network firewall, then you can access the router. Maybe it's a Linksys router and you can install your own little linux distro that monitors traffic and logs it to a remote server.
I'm just saying.. if your wireless network is wide open, then you're leaving yourself vulnerable to a whole slew of other possible attacks.
why would you take that chance?
Let's say you use gmail for email. Your username/password is sent over SSL, but the data of your email is NOT. If someone is inside your network firewall, then maybe they can use a packet sniffer to read your email.
How about the fact that probably the majority of people out there still have the default password on their router. If you're inside the network firewall, then you can access the router. Maybe it's a Linksys router and you can install your own little linux distro that monitors traffic and logs it to a remote server.
I'm just saying.. if your wireless network is wide open, then you're leaving yourself vulnerable to a whole slew of other possible attacks.
why would you take that chance?
Posted by rickroot on April 11, 2007 at 9:24 AM
Re: Is your wireless secure? Not with WEP...
Thanks. I got a router in my home for iphone. I also want to enhance its secuity.
Posted by 010mm on December 2, 2008 at 1:01 AM