Wireless safety

jbatista

My desktop pc is connected up with wireless router etc (netgear) and my laptop is wirelessly connected throught that my question is how can i check i am secure? that noone except me and my family can connect up?
The reason I ask is that my neighbour says he can update his Wii on my connection!!
Yet when our kids have updated their PSP I have had to enter a WEP key (think thats waht its called) so is he telling a big whoppa or not??

albertross_2

www.routerlogin.com

admin
password

wireless settings.

Is WEP selected? If so, assuming you haven't told them the password, or made it easily guessable, it is reasonably secure, but WPA with a long pwd is a more secure option.

jbatista

opened network connection properties



by network authentication it says open do i need to drop down and choose WPA

by the data encription it says WEP

not sure what i am really doing so ..... help

Oh god no I aint given them the password!!!

Conor_3

Your router is allowing everyone to connect. You need to alter the settings in the router, not on your computer, first.

Open up a web browser. Enter http://192.168.0.1 in the address bar. In the username/password box that pops up, enter admin as the username and password as the password.

Next, go to "Wireless Settings" which should be the fourth entry on the menu on the left of the screen.

In "Security Options", select WPA-PSK and in the "WPA-PSK Security Encryption" section, you'll see a box to enter the "Network Key". Put something in here as a password AND WRITE IT DOWN. Click on Apply. The network is now secure.

Now, nothing will be able to log on to the wireless network. Everything will need to reconnect. They'll ask for the network key and you then enter the password you've just written down that you entered in the WPA-PSK Securty Encryption section on the routers Wireless Settings page.

Any time anyone new wants to join the wireless network, they'll need to enter that password.

[URL="javascript:loadhelp('_wire','wpa-psk')"][/URL]

albertross_2

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=4911860&postcount=3

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=2471408&postcount=37

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=2471410&postcount=38

computerwoman

Hi I have a netgear this is what you do...
put in the souce cd you got...
username: admin
password: password

left-hand side
set password
and change the password for something you'll remember

then go to
wireless settings
scroll down until you come to
setup access list

here you will see who is on your wireless connection
tick the dot and press apply to add your laptop and anything else you have on there...

tick the box at the top for
turn access control on...
once you have got your laptop and other stuff added press apply

also in wireless setting you'll find this
allow broadcast of name (SSID)
un-check this and press apply at the bottom...
then log out at the bottom left-hand side...

I think that would do it...

when your in the wireless settings area at the bottom is your WEP key...you should have used this when you wanted to get your laptop on line and other stuff...
I had to use this to get my son's xbox 360 up and running...

hope this help's...cw

jbatista

Many thanks to you all, yep I was open, done and dusted thanks to you all

PistonBroke_2

Personally I'm not a big fan of Encryption i prefer to use the access control to control access to my Box as if you don't have the correct Mac address you don't get access this really is the strongest and Fastest way to protect your connection as encryption slow it down + anything you do like banking is always done on a secure connection anyway

+ Always Always change your login password

espresso

PistonBroke wrote: »

Personally I'm not a big fan of Encryption i prefer to use the access control to control access to my Box as if you don't have the correct Mac address you don't get access this really is the strongest and Fastest way to protect your connection as encryption slow it down + anything you do like banking is always done on a secure connection anyway

+ Always Always change your login password

:rotfl:

You are kidding yourself if you think that MAC address filtering gives any security!

It is easy to spoof any MAC, as it is transmitted for all to see in every packet of data.

Conor_3

PistonBroke wrote: »

Personally I'm not a big fan of Encryption i prefer to use the access control to control access to my Box as if you don't have the correct Mac address you don't get access this really is the strongest and Fastest way to protect your connection as encryption slow it down + anything you do like banking is always done on a secure connection anyway

Oh. Dear.

Firstly, MAC address sniffing and spoofing is extremely easy to do. MAC addresses are always transmitted in clear text in every data packet so all you have to do is collect a few packets and the source and destination MAC addresses are there for all to see. As manufacturers use a pool of addresses, you can work out which is the router and which is the client.

Changing the MAC address of your Wifi card to one that's allowed requires, at most, altering a registry key if your card drivers don't support Clone mode.

So as you can work out, it'd take all of about 30 seconds to crack your network and be logged on as an approved client.

WPA-PSK Encryption (I've not mentioned WEP as it's a doddle to crack) requires a brute force hack of the passphrase so takes quite a while. If you don't use a word, using instead jumbled letters in no particular order and use both upper and lower case as well as numbers and use the maximum number of characters allowed, the cracker will die of old age before they get it.

Secondly, because of the processing power available in routers and computers, encryption shows no noticable performance hit.