Securing your Home Wireless Network

D-A-L

Looking to lock down your home wireless network? This article has more useful information - http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/94.html

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reddevil38

D-A-L Newbie

I have 2 computers running XP and a laptop upstairs running Vista, I ran an unsecured network and everything worked fine, I decided to change this and secure it, my other computer running xp was fine all I had to do was enter the password and it was back to normal, but, the laptop recognised the network but had a red X in the right hand corner and stated that my settings was preventing this laptop to connect, I had to revert to the unsecured method and as soon as I did that the laptop connected, any idea's would be greatly appreciated
Eric

Kryters

D-A-L Newbie

About this article. I don't believe you should be recommending WEP encryption for a wireless network, especially when you are encouraging the use of "dictionary" passkeys:

There are reports that these types of passkeys can be cracked in the matter of minutes from sites such as this: Cracking Wireless Networks
There are specialised programs available which guess the passkey up to 60 times per second. If WEP was the only option available, I'd use a utility such as this one: WPA Passkey Generator to change your password to these difficult-to-crack passkeys.

However, a more concerning factor is the fact that WEP broadcasts your password, and can be picked from the airwaves by a skilled hacker.

Another piece of bad information is portraying MAC address filtering as ultra-secure. This is not the case. A hacker can find out a valid MAC address (your computer broadcasts this, after all), change his own to yours, and log on to your network once you log off. Once he has access to you router, he can change all the settings to accept his real MAC address.

If your router is compatible with WPA-PSK (or WPA2-PSK), I'd definitely switch to that as soon as possible. I'm not sure how valid these figures are, but if you were to try to guess a 63-digit WPA2 passkey at 60 guesses per second, you'd have to guess for (on average) half the age of the universe. Otherwise, there is no known way to crack this encryption. It's military-standard security.

Personally, I would recommend:

• WPA2-PSK
• 63-digit passkey (generated by link above)
• MAC Address Filtering (just in case)
• A 30 digit obscure password to access my router's settings
• Occasional (not obsessive =D) password changes

If you transfer sensitive information over your network such as credit card details, I suggest you look into a superior security system... These securitysystems may put off an opportunist data thief, but not an experienced and motivated cracker.

Thanks,

Kryters