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Posted on 27-01-2008

Wireless Security

Filed Under (Computer Tips, Technology) by Randy Bragg

How secure is your wireless network? Too many times I have turned on my computer and the wireless network connection icon tells me there are available connections. This is an indication that there are wireless networks out there, question is, are they secure.

Types Of Wireless Networks

• RFID -Radio-Frequency Identification
• Infrared/IRDA -line-of-sight low power optical networking.
• HomeRF -an older wireless PC networking standard that is rapidly
Disappearing.
• Bluetooth -wireless networking for connecting peripherals such as printers, PDAs etc., and sometimes used for LAN.
• WiFi -IEEE 802.11a, b, g there are other versions; the standard everyone is going to is 54mb of transfer speed.
• 1x RTT, 3G and 2.5G cellular technologies

Security

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) -uses MAC (Media Access Control) level security to access your wireless network, and does not share an authentication key. When the wireless network has verified that your MAC is allowed on the network that’s when the encryption begins.

WPA (WiFi Protected Access) –this is the successor to WEP, it should resolve some of the issues that WEP is known to have.

Before You Go Wireless

Ask yourself some questions before you add your home computer to the wireless world. Once you put yourself out there, anyone can get in to your PC if it is not secure.

Questions:

1. What kind of network will I be using?
2. What is your MAC?
3. Do you know how to get into your wireless router?
4. How many people are going to be on the network?
5. What is going to be your SSID?
6. Will you be using WEP or WPA?
7. What will be your method of using wireless?

Hackers Haven

Your open wireless network is a hacker’s hideout. He or she can get in while you are transmitting data and grab any of your information out of the air. With or without security you are still at risk. The time it takes a hacker to break into your network is about the same time it takes for you to get up and answer the door. So this authors opinion is that if you are using wireless do not put any information out that you don’t want the world to have.

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Comments

David on 18 September, 2007 at 4:48 pm #

I thought that a router provided a very good firewall beyond what the software in your computer provides. Is this not the case?

Randy Bragg on 18 September, 2007 at 8:20 pm #

This is the case when the person that has no knowledge of what tools to use to get through the firewall, look up some of the hackers tools for breaking through the wireless firewalls. Such as Air Snort, and many others. My thought on this is that if you are using wireless, never send anything that you don’t want to get compromised.

David on 19 September, 2007 at 1:12 am #

My only concern would be someone sending a virus to my computer. Does that happen? There’s nothing on the computers we have that isn’t already shared.