Identity theft software

ianian99

Nikolai wrote:

I don't think WPA-PSK is particularly easy to hack - is it?
I know WEP is relatively easy though.

may take slightly longer but easy enough to those with the knowledge

ianian99

billy_the_kid wrote:

The wierdy beardy hippy ethical hackers made me laugh. what did they actually do apart from driving around with a laptop and gawping at the amount of unprotected networks. As far as i can remember, the only advice they gave was to use up to date virus software.

crap advice they gave out. I was waiting on them saying use a firewall but this wont help people using your wifi if they are on your network then they are behind your firewall like you.
The programme was crap really

Nikolai

ianian99 wrote:

may take slightly longer but easy enough to those with the knowledge

I thought it was only susceptible to a brute force / dictionary attack, and that if you set your key to > 21 random chars it would take millions of years to crack it.
So setting a 63 char randomly generated key would be as good as impenetrable?
Granted if you set your password to a known word of 9 or 10 chars I'm sure it could be cracked quite easily with this method.

albertross_2

Nikolai wrote:

I thought it was only susceptible to a brute force / dictionary attack......

yes you are right, if you are using a WPA-psk with a 63 character random key, it is safe. The longer the key and the more random the better.

If you use an 8 character dictionary word with a default ssid, it is less safe, but the odds of someone having a go at cracking it are pretty slim, as there are so many unsecured and WEP secured ones about to pick on first.

ianian99

Nikolai wrote:

I thought it was only susceptible to a brute force / dictionary attack, and that if you set your key to > 21 random chars it would take millions of years to crack it.
So setting a 63 char randomly generated key would be as good as impenetrable?
Granted if you set your password to a known word of 9 or 10 chars I'm sure it could be cracked quite easily with this method.

can be cracked in minutes

albertross_2

ianian99 wrote:

can be cracked in minutes

This has been claimed on here before, could you post links to the evidence?

MadCowMan

Shorter PSK's can be cracked relativly easily ( and I didn't realise quite howe easily either )

http://www.wirelessdefence.org/Contents/coWPAttyMain.htm

longer keys would take exponentially long times to crack IMO ?

amcluesent

>NEVER use wifi wether encrypted or not as too easy to hack<

Yes, setting your PSK shared key to 'sausages' isn't very sensible in the days of dictionary attacks.

Luckily, the last Linksys access-point I setup offered "5wv40i1b4ei43tg1" as the WPA key - not so easy to brute force that key!

Moneymaker

MadCowMan wrote:

OSX is far from perfect and there are exploit mechanism available ... and if OSX has nothing in the wild , why do the major AV vendors make AV software for it ?

To make money. Ever heard of "snake oil"? Their excuse is that "Mac owners should be responsible and protect Windows users". As if a Mac owner would accidentally acquire a Windows virus then accidentally forward it to a Windows user! Anyway, I don't see why Windows users who are too stupid to realise that 99.99% of malware gets in via Internet Explorer and Outlook Express should be protected.

I think Windows users are actually masochists who enjoy the risks and excitement of running Windows (with I.E. and O.E.)

Here's an interesting article:
http://www.lowendmac.com/lab/07/0130.html

Morris2

ianian99 wrote:

my advice is NEVER use wifi wether encrypted or not as too easy to hack

depends on how secure you want to be for home use wpa is good enough in 99.9% of cases.

I have played around with some nice cisco kit that has some nice defence options the acess points copeate to detect and locate attaclers and you can allocate a spare ap or two as attack ap's to shut down any rogue ap's or clients.