Wireless fun

[Bungleau]

Some of you may recall I added a wireless router to my home network connection a while back. I enabled WEP (wireless encryption) and turned off broadcasting its ID so that no one who wasn't supposed to be there (like not me!) would stay out.

This afternoon, I happened to notice that the Wireless Access light was blinking rather rapidly. I jumped on to one of my machines and checked the router. Imagine my surprise when I discovered two MAC addresses (i.e. network cards) accessing the system! Now, I didn't check to make sure I knew who they were, but I unplugged the wireless router in short order. Try and connect through THAT, you freeloaders... [img]graemlins/evillaughter2.gif[/img]

Went to the Linksys web site tonight and found a Knowledgebase entry that covered the rest of the protective setup I needed to do: MAC address filtering. Took about ten minutes to set up and be sure it was what I wanted, and I'm back in business.

Doesn't mean a whole lot directly, but with the other discussion about spyware, I thought I'd toss in a thought on the wireless side of protection.

[mysticelt]

Wow! Good catch!

[Memnoch]

Don't people need a password/serial number to access any wireless stuff?

[Harkoliar]

maybe hackers??

[Bungleau]

When you first get most wireless equipment, it's set up wide-open. That means that it broadcasts the wireless network ID, and will accept anyone who knows it. Think of a website asking for a password and also saying "at the next password prompt, type 'geniusboy'".

The first level of security is to simply turn off the broadcast of the ID. Make 'em know it or guess it. I turned that off the first day.

Second thing is to turn on WEP, or... Wireless Encryption Protocol, I think. There, you can specify passphrase or encryption passcode, either 128-bit or 64-bit. I was using 128-bit.

Third thing is to restrict access by MAC address. That's the ID associated with your network card (or whatever). By definition, each one has a unique ID, no matter the manufacturer. So you can basically restrict access to a particular network card. That's what I now have enabled.

Of course, there are ways to get around it. You can tell your NIC to pretend it has a different ID. And there are some manufacturers of NICs (usually low-grade knock-offs) who buy someone else's NIC and duplicate it -- including the MAC address. Buy name-brand NICs, and you shouldn't have that problem.

Anywho, that's a brief summary of everything I know about wireless security. Like everything else, it works best when you turn it on.

Ermmmm... let's leave that straight line alone, okay? [img]smile.gif[/img]