Personal file sharing security risks?

[danhig123]

Hey everyone!

OK I have a security question. I have a wireless home network based around an Airport Express. I have 2 computers on this network, a mac desktop and a mac laptop. Both run Tiger... (the desktop is on 10.4.7 and the laptop runs 10.4.8)

My network is encripted using WEP. I want to have personal file sharing turned on on both computers. Will this pose as a security risk to my work? It would be really useful to perminently let both computers share files with one and other but I dont want to put my security in jepardy.

Also what if I then take my laptop out and use it on another network, if I forget to turn file sharing off will this mean anyone on that network could access my harddrive?

Danny

 

[ddekker]

security

well you have a couple things going for you, one you are WEP encrypted, while not unhackable, it will keep the honest people out, the to top that off, someone would have to get by the password on the apple, the Unix core is very secure, providing you have a pretty strong password (Numbers letters caps/no caps... symbols) its pretty dang hard to get through.. again, not impossible, one other thing you can do to slow it down is to use mac address filtering, WPA would be a better way, but I don't think all apples support it.. not sure...

DD

 

[danhig123]

What is Mac Address filtering sorry?

What would be good is to able to state exactly which computers can access my files... so I could know that no matter what network I join, only my home desktop can get to my laptops hard drive.

Danny

 

[Yaja123]

mac address filtering is a function of the router you are using. it will have a security section where you can input the mac address of the computers that are allowed to access your network.

mac address : a unique address of each wireless device

im not an expert so i cant answer your question around security outside of your home network setup. i also like to know.

 

[caveman_uk]

well you have a couple things going for you, one you are WEP encrypted, while not unhackable, it will keep the honest people out,

It's not the honest people you have to worry about. If the world was full of honest people we wouldn't have locks on our front doors.

WEP is crackable in minutes. It's better than nothing - especially if there's other networks around that are wide open - but it's far far from bombproof.

I won't cover the Samba (file sharing) part but as for the wireless security you should switch to WPA (better than WEP but not unhackable), turn on MAC filtering and turn off the SSID broadcast (the Airport set up calls this something else like 'Broadcast network name' or something).

Doing these things won't make you unhackable but you will be doing a lot more than most people do.

 

[danhig123]

Hey,

Cheers for the advice! I will go and sort out those settings.

Does anyone know a way of setting up personal file sharing just to allow a specific computer access to your files though? I mean for when im outside my home network.

Danny

 

[gavd]

SSID Broadcast

On the subject of turning off the SSID broadcast, does this effectively make your wi-fi network invisible unless someone knows what it's called?

 

[macuser2]

WPA set up on MacBook Pro

Hi. great info here about security just a quickie has anyone had problems setting up WPA on a Macbook Pro through a d-link G604T Modem/Router? I cannot get this to work. I have access to wireless, that is my Mac can see the Router, but my network is Open, going through the Modem setup, I select WPA but it never seems to activate it (ie i don't get asked a password upon connection). Has anyone else had this problem? I'm also gonna try the other suggestions such as MAC filtering and turning off my SSID broadcast...(would be good to set up WPA too though...)
cheers all!!