Just a little warning

stevemcol

MAC specific access is just guilding the lilly and pretty much irrelevent.

WPA with a strong PSK (63 random characters) is the only sure way.
(I believe it's pretty much bullet proof; anyone care to confirm?)

espresso

But has prudryden set up strong WPA-PSK encryption or just relying on MAC address filtering?

:eek:

Streeet

Omertron wrote:

It'd be easier for him/her to break in and logon to your PC.

A few years ago our company had office pc's stolen.. all containg customer data. Very embarrasing and costly to resolve! All our Hard Drives now have encrypted storage format. (Apparently?!)

I'm sure it was alot easier way to get the data than sitting outside in a cold van for hours!

TheImportanceOfBeingIdle

spurs1234 wrote:

It is easy but it takes time and the person has to be using there machine at the time of cracking , you have to get in the area of 60,000 packats of data before there wep key even starts to form.

As for TheImportanceOfBeingIdle comments i think he's lying!

There are not many programs that are windows based that work at all, most are linux and you have to use a certain type of wireless card to crack it and i doubt very much TheImportanceOfBeingIdle know's which toye that is.:D

Is this what you get for trying to warn MSE users about the dangers of wireless broadband networks???

I kinda expected idiots like you to make such rude comments. If you believe I am lying then fair enough. Thats no skin off my nose. Not only does it show your ignorance, it also shows your lack of knowledge.

sco0ter

Hmmm.... This isnt going to start into a slagging match is it???

Mac address filtering offers NO protection against anybody with a little know how. The tools that I mentioned earlier will identify the computers connected to the router by thier MAC address so its easy enough to spoof it and gain access if this is all they have.

WPA is still not 100%. even a maximum random key can be found it just takes longer and more packets so it will protect against Wardriving but not against your neighbour who has all the time in the world to leave a packetsniffer running

amcluesent

>WPA is still not 100%. even a maximum random key can be found it just takes longer<

This might by a concern if I though GCHQ was trying to intercept my wi-fi; I'm more than confident nosey neighbours will be defeated by WPA and MAC connection filtering.

steady__eddie

There's no room to park a white moped let alone a white van within half a mile of my house after 4 o'clock in the afternoon so I reckon that I'm safe.
Flippancy aside, as a technothicky I prefer to use the external moden thingy, not for security purpose but I find that surfing is quicker than using wireless and I only have to resort to wireless if the child is using her lappy for some more "absolutely essential vital research".

albertross_2

The problem with using mac address filtering alone (apart from it being easily spoofable), is that anyone in range can install a free sniffer (in Windows/Linux/Apple), which will capture everything you type on the internet, all your emails and email passwords..if it isn't encrypted, everything is there in plain text, to read in notepad, or recreate the webpages that you are visiting.

The programme gave no indication of how they did it, if indeed they did it at all, but cracking wep isn't trivial. Cracking wpa with a short key can be trivial if you use a common word, using a 63 character random key hasn't been cracked yet to the best of my knowledge.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/security/wireless.mspx

stevemcol

Agree with albatross. The very concept, mathematically speaking, of cracking a 63 character WPA key is mind-boggling. I'd be surprised if the metoffice super-computer would even come close.

Kilty_2

People...... that piece on The Real Hustle MUST have been a set-up.

"software" that will allow people to see EXACTLY what you are doing exists in ONE form, VNC.

VNC requires you to have installed a server on your machine, so it can be accessed by the client (ie, the person in the van).

Don't worry too much, just WPA your network up.