Comments on: How to Secure Your Wireless Home Network – Prevent Others From Stealing BandWidth http://www.ampercent.com/how-to-secure-your-wireless-network-connection/5923/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:22:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Pseudobytehttp://www.ampercent.com/how-to-secure-your-wireless-network-connection/5923/#comment-10303 Pseudobyte Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:00:44 +0000 http://www.ampercent.com/?p=5923#comment-10303 MAC Filtering sounds nice in theory, but practically, it does little to nothing. It will prevent most ordinary users from accessing an otherwise unsecured network, but anyone who actually knows what they're doing can easily spoof their MAC address. If you use any kind of encryption, MAC Filtering will add no extra security. Anyone who can bypass your encryption can bypass your MAC Filtering with no problem. And besides, you have to go to your router's configuration every time you want to connect a new device to the network. The hassle is not worth the negligible security increase. SSID Broadcast is another common myth (though not mentioned here). Never disable SSID Broadcast, it's not worth the trouble. For much the same reasons, it does nothing more to secure your network if you use encryption. An SSID is just a name, NOT a password. As for choosing an SSID, using something like 'virus' or 'trojan' won't accomplish anything, in fact it may make your network less secure. There are data sets called Rainbow Tables, which can be pre-computed if you know the SSID of a network in advance. There are such tables readily available for the most common SSIDs, so using something like virus or trojan could compromise your security, even if you use something as secure as WPA2. I recommend either generating a string of random characters, or if you prefer, stringing four to six random words together. If you're REALLY paranoid, change your SSID periodically. Rainbow tables can be made by anyone with the processing power to devote to it, but it takes time. Unless someone has a really, really good reason to get into your network, they're not going to compute a new rainbow table themselves, they'll just find a less secure network. Always use WPA2 if it's available, and use a strong key. There are 95 allowable characters, so make use of them. You can use both cases of letters, numbers, and most punctuation, including spaces, essentially anything you can type on a US English keyboard layout. Preferably your key should be random, and you can use sites like this to generate a random key: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm (the top one would be used for WEP encryption, the bottom two (preferably the middle one, since it uses a larger character set) for WPA/WPA2). MAC Filtering sounds nice in theory, but practically, it does little to nothing. It will prevent most ordinary users from accessing an otherwise unsecured network, but anyone who actually knows what they’re doing can easily spoof their MAC address. If you use any kind of encryption, MAC Filtering will add no extra security. Anyone who can bypass your encryption can bypass your MAC Filtering with no problem. And besides, you have to go to your router’s configuration every time you want to connect a new device to the network. The hassle is not worth the negligible security increase.
SSID Broadcast is another common myth (though not mentioned here). Never disable SSID Broadcast, it’s not worth the trouble. For much the same reasons, it does nothing more to secure your network if you use encryption. An SSID is just a name, NOT a password.
As for choosing an SSID, using something like ‘virus’ or ‘trojan’ won’t accomplish anything, in fact it may make your network less secure. There are data sets called Rainbow Tables, which can be pre-computed if you know the SSID of a network in advance. There are such tables readily available for the most common SSIDs, so using something like virus or trojan could compromise your security, even if you use something as secure as WPA2. I recommend either generating a string of random characters, or if you prefer, stringing four to six random words together. If you’re REALLY paranoid, change your SSID periodically. Rainbow tables can be made by anyone with the processing power to devote to it, but it takes time. Unless someone has a really, really good reason to get into your network, they’re not going to compute a new rainbow table themselves, they’ll just find a less secure network.
Always use WPA2 if it’s available, and use a strong key. There are 95 allowable characters, so make use of them. You can use both cases of letters, numbers, and most punctuation, including spaces, essentially anything you can type on a US English keyboard layout. Preferably your key should be random, and you can use sites like this to generate a random key: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm (the top one would be used for WEP encryption, the bottom two (preferably the middle one, since it uses a larger character set) for WPA/WPA2).

]]> By: Thermal Imaging :http://www.ampercent.com/how-to-secure-your-wireless-network-connection/5923/#comment-9680 Thermal Imaging : Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:27:04 +0000 http://www.ampercent.com/?p=5923#comment-9680 wireless internet is simply the best though sometimes the signal fluctuates depending on the weather condition ` wireless internet is simply the best though sometimes the signal fluctuates depending on the weather condition `

]]> By: Amit Banerjeehttp://www.ampercent.com/how-to-secure-your-wireless-network-connection/5923/#comment-7245 Amit Banerjee Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:20:56 +0000 http://www.ampercent.com/?p=5923#comment-7245 Thanks Satyajit for the comment. Thanks Satyajit for the comment.

]]> By: Satyajithttp://www.ampercent.com/how-to-secure-your-wireless-network-connection/5923/#comment-7222 Satyajit Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:20:36 +0000 http://www.ampercent.com/?p=5923#comment-7222 nice tutorial bro.... keep up the good work...yeah WPA is certainly a better option compared to WEP when it comes to wireless security.Thanks for sharing.... :) nice tutorial bro…. keep up the good work…yeah WPA is certainly a better option compared to WEP when it comes to wireless security.

Thanks for sharing…. :)

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