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Wireless security?

emdotdee

emdotdee

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 6, 2003
240
4
Widnes, Cheshire, England.
hey hey, hope you lot can give me some advice on my wireless router.
righty.
i have a broadband connection that goes to my mac (iMac g4 OSX 10.3.8) via an ethernet cable as i don't have a wireless card.
my brother is connected to it by his wireless though on his peecee laptop.
on the routers settings on the laptop i have managed to hide the SID code or whatever it is called but i was just wondering if there is any other measures i can take to stop any other people using my wireless connection? and do it from my mac?
or any ways to check if someone else is using it that i don't know about?

thanks for any information on this subject as i don't really know where to look.
thanks
 
You might want to get a router, just for the added security, and the fact that you won't need to keep your iMac on just so he can use the internet. I recommend the Linksys WRT54G. It has all the security things in a nice control panel that is easy to figure out and is also web based so you can access it from any computer.

Sorry, I don't know anything about wireless via the iMac.
 
noooo.

i've got the router, connected to my mac via ethernet, and his laptop by wireless, i just wanna know if there is any other security measures i can take that i can control from my mac regarding other people using my connection.

sorry, i'm really crap at explaining things and gettin my point across, cheers.
 
I'm a bit confused as to what your setup exactly is, but if you're using a wireless router and it's capable of WPA encryption and the PC laptop is also capable of WPA, then you should use that. WEP encryption has been shown to be crackable (although I get the impression that you're not using any sort of encryption at all).

Your router should have come with documentation that talks about setup, security, etc.
 
Westside guy said:
I'm a bit confused as to what your setup exactly is, but if you're using a wireless router and it's capable of WPA encryption and the PC laptop is also capable of WPA, then you should use that. WEP encryption has been shown to be crackable (although I get the impression that you're not using any sort of encryption at all).

Your router should have come with documentation that talks about setup, security, etc.
Click to expand...

early WEP was crackable becayse the implementaion wasn't good, not that easy to crack 128bit WEP from moderm routers, more 99.999% of people WEP is more than safe enough.
 
WEP is totally busted.

If you want to be fairly sure use WPA with a ~20 letters/numbers non-dictionary password.

If you also turn off SSID broadcast and turn on MAC-filtering you should be safe (although both are easily circumventable). If you use all those three chances are that a wardriver will go on and try the next (open) network and leave you alone...
 
javiercr said:
early WEP was crackable becayse the implementaion wasn't good, not that easy to crack 128bit WEP from moderm routers, more 99.999% of people WEP is more than safe enough.
Click to expand...

While router manufacturers found ways to make WEP take longer to crack, it's the protocol itself that is fatally flawed. Even with a newer implementation of WEP it's just a matter of collecting enough packets before you can break it. That's why WPA was put together.

However I agree that WEP is better than nothing, and will keep the casual hacker/cracker out. Especially when so many people seem to leave their wireless networks completely open! Why spend a couple days collecting packets to crack a WEP network when you can get on a wide-open one immediately? :D
 
WEP is worthless

WEP is worthless Kismac can crack into WEP networks in VERY little time.

WPA is very secure go with it.

I have broken into my 128bit WEP network(airport express(s)). It took me less than 5 minutes. All you need is network traffic.
 
WEP and WPA, all encryption.

A secure feature i like is MAC-address filtering. -For some reason apple calls the mac-address an apple-ID but it's the same thing-

This MAC address (apple-ID) is an unique hardware address and you can set a router to only allow sertain addresses, this keeps out strangers beautifully...

So, apart from encryption do the MAC address filtering....
 
MAC-fitering is, in it self, not secure, as MAC-addresses are very easy to collect and spoof. But along with hidden SSID and WPA encryption you should be fairly safe. Unless you have something on your network that a wardriver really want. In that case: forget wireless and go for wires... ;)
 
evil_noodle_ said:
I was just wondering if there is any other measures i can take to stop any other people using my wireless connection? and do it from my mac?
Click to expand...

SSID being silent is ok, and a good start, but to add additional layers you can do these other things

At a minimum, turn on WEP 128bit encryption on your wireless connection on the router. That'll discourage people that drive by and borrow your connection.

To go a bit more paranoid you can get the MAC address off your peecee laptop and have WEP + MAC filtering that will not allow someone with the password / crack the password to use your system. Unless you live in Manhattan downtown or in a dorm I really don't think your two or three houses around you will go to much effort to crack your wireless connection. WEP while crackable, isn't simple to crack you need to sniff a lot of traffic in order to do it.

For most normal environments this would be enough security to keep the riff raff out.
 
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