Wi-Fi shield for Dummies
October 12, 2008
There are 4 basic levels of Wi-Fi protection: “Open” (unsecured), WEP, WPA- PSK, and 802.1X. Let’s walk through these techno-acronyms and explain these basic levels of safety measure in less technical terms.
“Open” is just that, open to all comers without any basic level of safety measure. Like leaving your front door unlocked for anyone to enter, open networks are just a poor concept.
WEP is the lowest level of protection available on most Wi-Fi networks. Unfortunately, WEP have fundamental flaws that manufacture it easy to hack and software on the Web can crack WEP protection in 10 minutes. WEP is equivalent to locking your screen door; it may keep your neighbor out, but it takes little effort to break in.
WPA is the successor to WEP that is more difficult to crack. WPA is comparable to having a individual lock on your front door, and giving a key to everyone you want to give access to. Keys can be shared or walked away with when someone leaves the network. The challenge with WPA is removing someone requires the entire network to be re-keyed and new keys re-distributed to valid users.
“802.1X” is called enterprise-level shield considering it provides the highest level of Wi-Fi protection available. 802.1X is widely deployed by Fortune 500 companies with a RADIUS Server and eliminates the common key problem by providing a strange key for each …
How Secure is Your Wi-Fi Network Against War Drivers & Casual Network Intruders?
October 12, 2008
Did you know that your wireless Wi-Fi network can be accessed by hacker from by a mile away? With a laptop PC, Wi-Fi hackerware off the Net, and a $30 antenna, hackers can access your Wi-Fi network from much further away than your standard laptop can reach. whether your network is unsecured or open, they have the capability to monitor every piece of data that is sent by the network, access your PCs, and whether you’re connected to a VPN, tunnel through to a corporate network.
War driving, the art of finding Wi-Fi networks, is becoming a popular game for many hackers. Armed with a PC, antenna, and GPS, hackers drive around their communities to locate wireless Wi-Fi networks, and can post them on popular war driving websites for all to access by the World Wide Web.
And finding unsecured networks is like shooting fish in a barrel:
Shipley, a computer defense researcher and consultant, is demonstrating war driving. It doesn’t take expanded to produce results. The moment he pulls out of the parking carport, the laptop displays the name of a wireless network operating within one of the anonymous downtown office buildings: “SOMA AirNet.” Shipley’s custom software passively logs the latitude and longitude, the signal strength, the network name and other vital stats After an hour, Shipley’s black Saturn has crawled through rush hour traffic, and his jury-rigged wireless hacking setup has discovered eighty networks beaconing their location to the world.
http://www.securityfocu…
Best Practices to Secure Your Wireless Network
October 12, 2008
The good news is that simple tools are available to properly secure your wireless network and avoid the dangers discussed above.
The Wi-Fi Alliance designated WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) as the recommended defense practices for consumer & business networks. WPA comes in two forms: WPA-PSK which offers a lower-level defense for consumers, and WPA-Enterprise which offers a higher level of shield for enterprises. Solutions like Witopia and WiFi Login Pro deliver enterprise level safety measure with the consumer-level simplicity that can be easily and quickly deployed in home offices, small offices, and medium businesses.
WPA-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) - WPA-PSK provides a relatively secure solution for consumer networks. whether you’re technically competent, and feel comfortable configuring the protection parameters of your wireless access point or router, you can configure your wireless network to support WPA-PSK. By entering a common 64 digit hexadecimal key or an ASCII pass phrase into every device on the network you can properly encrypt all network traffic to and from the access point. The LucidLink WiFi Client can automatically detect whether a network requires WPA-PSK and simplifies the client configuration.
WPA-PSK has fixed many of the problems associated with pre-shared keys used in WEP. While it is quite awkward to properly enter a 64 digit hexadecimal key into each device on the network, whether done carefully, it can supply strong encryption of network…
So You Think Your Wi-Fi Network is Secure?
October 12, 2008
Wi-Fi networks deliver tremendous benefits. They supply the ability to connect to the Web nearly anywhere at anytime. You can connect in your home, office, or the coffee shop without being tethered to a wall jack, and Wi-Fi is built into most laptop PC’s.
Wi-Fi is plus easy to set up whether you don’t think about defense. Out of the box, you can quickly turn on your wireless network, and connect your without much effort. Without defense however, everyone else can connect to your network with the same ease. whether you don’t take the steps to secure your wireless network everything you do by the wireless network can additionally be seen by hackers up to a mile away.
Who Needs Wireless protection?
One of the common reasons why users don’t secure their Wi-Fi networks is that no one wants access to their network or that there is no urgent knowledge on the network to concern about. Hacking is less about joy-riding on someone else’s network and more about the financial payoff that can be gained by stealing confidential or personal info by the network. In fact, by half of cyber crimes are now committed by Wi-Fi networks, considering they supply anonymity that wired networks don’t supply.
With a poorly secured Wi-Fi network, a wireless hacker can read your mail, see the websites you visit, and even access files on your system that aren’t properly secured. Your e-mail username and password are easily picked off an unsecured Wi-Fi network when every moment your e mail is update…
Wi-Fi Users, Beware: Hot Spots Are Weak Spots
October 12, 2008
From Wall Street Journal
Next instance you are sitting in a hotel lobby checking e mail on your laptop, be careful: The “businessman” in the next lounge chair may be tracking your every move.
Many Wi-Fi users don’t know that hackers posted at hot spots can steal personal info out of the air relatively easily. And savvy criminal hackers aren’t settling for just access to credit cards, bank accounts and other personal financial knowledge; they love to sneak into your company’s network, too.
Whether you’re using a Wi-Fi hot spot at a hotel, airport or cafe, “you’ve got to assume that anything you are doing is being monitored,” says Shawn Henry, deputy assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s cybercrimes division.
Home Wi-Fi networks are vulnerable, too, but it is far more fruitful for a hacker to pitch his tent in a busy hotel lobby or convention-center lounge where he can gather info from dozens of users. And Wi-Fi hot spots have proliferated, multiplying the potential targets for hackers. There were 66,921 hot spots in the U.S. last year, up 56% from 2006, according to advertising firm JiWire Inc. T-Mobile USA Inc. has 8,700 hot spots across the nation in such places as Starbucks and Borders Books & Music. AT&T Inc. has 10,000 hot spots in places like McDonald’s, Barnes & Noble and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.
Mr. Henry says businesses that offer Wi-Fi, like hotels, often don’t know that their networks have been breached and many times don’t …