Home Wireless Network Security

According to a December 2004 study, approximately 60-70 percent of all wireless networks are insecure. Although there is a lot of information on securing wireless networks, most of this information emphases on corporate networks. Wireless security is imperative in the home for the same reasons why it is important in corporations. If you have an unsecured wireless network in your home, anyone in close closeness can spy on your online activities. Depending on how your home network is configured, someone could even gain full access to your computer’s hard drive above an unsecured wireless network. Even if no one is around that wants to spy on you or perform some malicious action in opposition to you, your neighbors could wipe off of your Internet connection. This would not only divest you of bandwidth that you are paying for, but if your neighbor conducted some illegal activity while online, it could be traced back to your network. Right now, one might be wondering what the odds are of any of these things ever occurrence. If you have an unsecured wireless connection, the odds of it being oppressed are pretty good.

 

About four years ago, I was asked by one of the companies that I was writing for at the time to do an experimentation to see how many wireless networks I could detect and how many of those networks were apprehensive. To perform the experiment, I loaded a copy of Net Stumbler onto my laptop and had my wife drive me about while I tried to detect wireless networks. During my experiment I managed to identify seven networks and none of them were secure. Seven wireless networks certainly aren’t many, but there are some things to keep in mind. First, I live in the middle of nowhere in a rural part of South Carolina, not in a densely populated place like New York City. Second, I was using a stock Wi-Fi card without any type of external antenna. Third, I was attempting to detect wireless networks from a moving vehicle, using a Wi-Fi card that had a relatively short range. Fourth, this was four years ago.

If I detected that many wireless networks, four years ago, in the middle of nowhere, under conditions that would give me poor reception, can you imagine how many wireless networks are in use today? Wireless networks are all over, and the vast majority of them are insecure.

 

In fact, as of December 2004, an estimated 60 to 70 percent of all wireless networks did not use any type of encryption. My dot is that wireless networks are everywhere and the majority of them are insecure, and the bad guys know this. Hackers habitually engage in a practice called war walking. War walking is similar to my small experiment. It’s basically a trip on foot, by car, by airplane, or whatever to try to place wireless networks. At first it might not seem like a huge deal if a hacker knows that you have a wireless network. After all, most of your neighbors likely have wireless networks too. Besides, wireless networks have a relatively short range and it would be easy to spot someone sitting in front of your house with a laptop. The problem is that even though your wireless access point may have a short range, it is possible to make a home-based antenna that can receive your network’s signal from many miles away. In fact, if a straight line of sight is available, it is possible to make a Wi-Fi antenna out of a Pringles can that can cut off a Wi-Fi signal from up to ten miles away. Hackers no longer need to sit in a car in front of your house to hack your wireless network.

 

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How to Enable Wireless Network Security

The age of wireless network has approved the freedom from the hassles of wired ones and improved the mobility for computer system users. Such networks allow the users to access the Internet, without the constraints of being physically next to to the line of connection. Despite the security threats mixed up, many people don’t take the matter of securing their wireless networks seriously. It is vital to setup a secure wireless network as it prevents illicit people from easily connecting to the network to download different things. Wireless Internet access is swiftly gaining popularity over the whole world. Most people prefer the unplugged practice that wireless networks provide. Wi-Fi hot spots have mushroomed everywhere and home users are increasingly going the wireless way. A wireless network operates much like a radio station as it transmits data over the waves. While this feature enables portability and unplugged access, it has a downside, which is exposure of your network to eavesdroppers and hackers. It’s very essential that you should know the steps to secure a wireless network, which can effectively prevent malicious attacks. Here are a few basics on how to secure a wireless network :-

 

SSID
SSID (Service Set Identifier) is the name given to exact network. It is essential for all devices on the wireless network to use the same SSID, in order to communicate with each other. The SSID of a wireless network can be placed manually, or it can be generated automatically. While setting the SSID manually, it’s important to make it something difficult to figure out. Routers and access point devices usually provide a methodology to change the SSID for network access. For this purpose, the first step is to log into the router through the web browser (like Internet Explorer). A window appears asking for user name and password, which are both ADMIN by default. As soon as the user enters the password, the router configuration window opens. The SSID must be entered here, and a wireless channel should be selected. While securing a wireless network, the user should not forget to disable his SSID wireless broadcast, before applying the changes.

WEP and WPA Encryptions
Encryption is an chief aspect of network security and helps to protect the user data from prying eyes. Almost all the wireless equipment comes with WEP (wired equivalent privacy) and WPA (Wi-Fi protected access) encryption schemes. These encryption schemes can be enabled or disabled, depending on the requirement of the user. WEP is a scheme which was included with the first generation of wireless networking equipments. However, it consists of some serious flaws, which led to the growth of WPA. WPA provides stronger wireless data encryption as compared to WEP but requires the configuration of all the communicating devices for it’s functioning. After enabling encryption on his router or access point, one should configure an additional wireless network devices. WPA provides better security against snoopers and hackers. For the configuration of WEP / WPA, the user should log on to the router as well as enable the wireless tab / wireless security. He can make a choice between WEP or WPA encryption, the latter being more secured. The user can choose between 64 or 128 bit encryption. A hexadecimal WEP / WPA key should be generated before applying the changes.
After the configuration of WEP / WPA and SSID, the final step involves the restriction of user access in the wireless network. This can be done by inflowing the MAC address of the wireless computer and selecting ‘restrict access’, during the router configuration. MAC address of a computer can easily be seen by typing “ipconfig/all”, in the command prompt. The above mentioned steps are a simple answer of how to secure a wireless network. After configuring the router, the user should unplug it from the wireless computer, and establish the wireless software and adapters on the wireless computer. The WEP / WPA encryption key should be kept in records securely, and when prompted, the user should enter it.

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How to resolve problems with encryption key for wireless network security

Wireless security is the prevention of illegal access or damage to computers via wireless networks.

Wireless networks are very ordinary, both for organizations and individuals. Lots of laptop computers have wireless cards pre-installed. The ability to get into a network while mobile has large benefits. Though, wireless networking has a lot of security issues. Hackers have established wireless networks relatively easy to break into, and even make use of wireless technology to crack into wired networks. As a result, it’s very main that enterprises define effective wireless security policies that guard against illegal access to important resources. Wireless Intrusion Prevention Systems are usually used to enforce wireless security policies.

The risks to users of wireless technology have improved as the service has become more popular. There were comparatively few dangers when wireless technology was first introduced. Crackers had not yet had time to latch on to the new technology and wireless was not frequently found in the work place. Though, there are a grand number of security risks linked with the present wireless protocols and encryption methods, and in the carelessness and ignorance that exists at the user and corporate IT level. Cracking methods have turn out to be much more sophisticated and innovative with wireless. Cracking has also turn into much easier and more accessible with easy-to-use Windows or Linux-based tools being made existing on the web at no charge.

Wireless technology release from copper wires. A user can use a notebook computer, PDA, Pocket PC, Tablet PC, or just a cell phone and stay online everywhere a wireless signal is available. The basic theory after wireless technology is that signals can be conceded by electromagnetic waves that are then transmitted to a signal receiver. But to create two wireless devices understand each other, we require protocols for communication.

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