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How do you know your wireless is secure?

davinci1

I want to know how you know your internet is secure so no one in your neighbor hood can steal or hack my internet service. A few people in our house use a mix between ethernet cable and wireless. I don't use the wireless so i don't know how you set it up on the computer but when you use wireless for the first time to you have to enter a user name and password to access? I just want to make sure its secure. Thank you

Comments

lasagna

Almost anything is better than nothing ... most "drive by" hackers won't waste their time trying to get into a network even with a 40-bit WEP password on it. That is by no means secure for someone who wants to hack their way in -- and it doesn't take a long time or a lot of data to gain access, but with enough other unsecured networks out there, you become less of a target by taking even the minimum steps.

With that said ... the best most residential routers can do today is WPA2 with AES. If your router and PC can support it, use it.

You can login to the router and pull up the settings to see what you're using (on the Verizon ActionTec routers, it's on the wireless summary page). If you can't use WPA2, then WPA most likely with TKIP, followed by WEP-128 is where you want to be.

Use a non-obvious key for the wireless -- sufficiently long and sufficiently random (you don't have to type it --- so why not make it difficult for others to guess) -- and change it periodically.

There are other "security measures" which people will talk about (hidden SSID, MAC filtering, etc.) and you can use these, but they really add no significant security -- a hacker will find a hidden SSID in a matter of seconds, and as soon as a single packet traverses the Wireless network, a hacker will have a MAC address they can hijack to get past any filters. The security really lies in the encryption strength.

spacedebris

Prevent someone from hacking your network.. simple, dont use wireless at all and turn the wireless on the router off. Thats the only option to prevent hacking. All other security settings like WEP, WPA, WPA2 will only slow a hacker down. They will not stop them.

Now if you want wireless, then your only option is to use encryption. Again this will only slow hackers down. But the chances you have a hacker next door is rather remote. Now by default the Verizon router uses WEP security. This is just the basics. Keeps honest people honest. Now if you want to increase your security, you can change the router security to WPA2. Dont worry about WPA as this is basically the same as WEP in terms of security effectiveness. WPA2 is more secure than the other two. This will keep you safe from the novices. Then as long as you dont have an advanced computer user nearby you should be fairly safe.

cjacobs001

assuming that you are using either MAC addressing on your router for the ONLY computers aloowed to connect to it, or your wireless has SOME encryption on it (otherwise your wireless is open and available to anyone close enough to receive the signal)

The answer is . . . 42 when you ask the right questions

The questions to ask are:

why is hacking done? why would someone want to attempt to hack my wireless?

what are the gains if someone is successful ? Can they then also get into my computers or TV's, or ONLY use my wireless?

what type accounts\places are hackers likely to attempt gaining access to in the first place? is mine one of the easiest types?

Wireless hacking is an 'opportunity' crime. If they are not close enough to get a good signal, the opportunity isn't really there. In theory, how far COULD a good wireless signal reach? In reality, the more obstacles yoour wireless signal is exposed to, the shorter the distance it is going to be a good signal. (obtacles are walls, floors, pipes, everything electronic, all metals, etc., etc., OH, and that includes all of your neighbors walls, floors, electronics, etc)

As someone else posted already, there are usually enough 'unsecured' (open) wireless networks around so that if yours is not 'open', it probably is 'secure enough'. But as someone else also already posted, 'secured' ONLY means 'slowing them down' if they know what they are doing. There isn't really any such thing as totally, truely secure.

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