Linksys And Aol Broadband

albertross_2

I would disable SSID broadcasting, as it will stop casual hacking, or accidental connection from your neighbours. It's also quite annoying for them, as your router will keep popping up as available on their PC, when you switch it on.

If you can, use a generated passphrase from here, as they are far harder to crack than a simple phrase..

https://www.grc.com/passwords

just copy and paste the 63 character key into your router config, and PC config. If it doesn't work, just undo the changes.

Aiadi

What are we talking about here in terms of risk? is it someone else using my ISP to connect to the internet and probably clogging my access or is it something more?

albertross_2

The ssid thing is easy to do, and will not affect your wireless, so you may as well do it now you have got wireless working. It's a one click and it's done thing.

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I am overstating the risk here, in order to give you a full answer, so please bear that in mind.. This is a worse case scenario..

If you have setup encryption with WPA, then you are probably safe, but there are wpa cracking programs available that do dictionary attacks, so common words or short keys are potentially crackable. If you have a script kiddie up the road, with a knowledge of Linux, and time on their hands, then it may be a challenge to them.

It is more than internet access (people are starting to get sued for downloading/sharing music, so if they do this on your connection, the lawyers will be writing to you). If you also have a monthly download limit, extra users may use your limit up faster.

It means that they will have access to your PC/network, as if they were plugged into it. Will be able to read your emails, passwords, sites visited, credit card numbers etc.. Also, if someone connects to your network with a worm infected PC, they may infect you. (using a software firewall will help protect against this).

Aiadi

Thanks, I have disabled SSID broadcasting but have a feeling that the signal strength has dropped. Is it just my imagination or is this to be expected?

albertross_2

It is not something to be expected. You could turn it back on to test.

Aiadi

Ah, it seems that whenever I change some of the security settings that I get a slight difficulty in initiating connection but once it's done (by bringing the wireless devices closer together), it goes back to a state of normality.