Wi-Fi encryption

[Hugh R]

Just for the heck of it, I walked down my private road with a security gate, with my iPhone and found that 10 of the 25 homes on my street had open Wi-Fi. Being the Prez of the HOA, I sent everyone an email telling them what I found. I should of hacked in to their puters, but I didn't. I hope they take it to heart.

[porsche4life]

My parents wifi is unsecured..... Of course their drive is long enough that you would have to be parked near the house to pick anything up.... Its a non issue out here.


The wifi at my place in town however is locked tight with frequent passcode changes.

[slodave]

Dude! That's how I get free access as I walk down the street. Don't tell your neighbors!

[slodave]

BTW, I'm typing this from free wifi.

[Hugh R]

I'm not a puter security expert by any means, but I'm amazed by those who log on to free wi-fi w/o encryption. My understanding is that the local coffee shop can hand out a card with a password and you have some security, as opposed to an open wi-fi with no security.

[slodave]

I'm on my iPhone. Not much anyone can steal. I don't log onto open wifi with a laptop.

[Joe Bob]

The HOA I used to live adjacent to, also had open WIFI. Mine was....I also named my station HOAs Suck.....

[campbellcj]

A few years ago, I was able to actually remote-desktop into one of my neighbors' crappy old Windows95/98 PC's and leave a message on his desktop. In other words they had zero security on their actual computers in addition to the open wireless.

Lately our neighbors at home as well as in our office building have pretty well locked things down...

[LakeCleElum]

When I was out of town building my house, I'd cruise neighborhoods looking for a signal just to get my email each evening.....Once drove in a ditch and lost my lumber rack while screwing with the 'puter....

[MysticLlama]

Two parts to it too.

1.) The encryption itself. It's so much easier and cross compatible than it used to be that there is really no excuse.

2.) Having your AP just blasting out more power than it needs to letting people connect from a long way away.

I'm actually guilty of #2 because I haven't bought a directional antenna yet, I have an omni all the way on one side of the house and use it on the other side most of the time, so it's jacked to full power. I keep it on a different channel than the neighbor though so I don't blow them away with interference. (1 watt radio)

At the office there are 25 APs in range on any given day. It seems to be about 1/3 open, 1/3 WEP (may as well be open) and 1/3 WPA or WPA2.

[Super_Dave_D]

Isn't it illegal to steal peoples wireless? Even if its unsecured? I don't know how vocal I would be if I was doing that.

[slodave]

My phone auto connects to non-secured wifi. What am I to do?

[jyl]

I leave my WLAN network open. How much of an idiot am I? I live in a single-family house neighborhood, my signal probably goes about 1 house away and I know (well) everyone within 4 houses. I know someone could sit in a car at the curb and use my network. I have all sharing turned off on the Mac, except for printer sharing.

[id10t]

Some of us run "open" APs to see what you are doing....

[David]

It's interesting what folks name their network, but I'm surprised more people don't have fun with it like: "Noisy neighbors suck" or "Quit stealing my internet" or "F--- Off" or ...

[rsNINESOOPER]

Hey thats funny...... I do have fun with my wireless, Its called "ffokcuf" cause my idiot neighbors were using it. I change it every 3 months or so cause I think there is a smarty pants in my neighborhood who hacks it. It gets really really slow so the trick is to unplug the box and wait a bit. When that stops working reset the name and password and it works good again. I have called it more explicit names but this one has kinda stuck cause its been working for almost 8 months.

[red-beard]

My christmas present to my sister was rebuilding her network here in San Diego.

A secure firewall with VPN
2 secure Access Points
A DOCSIS 3.0 Cable modem
RAID NAS with auto backup software
Connectedall PCs and the XBOX to the network

she had a G router which was at factory default and completely open

[svandamme]

it's all fun and games till a pedoperv downloads nasty pics from your connection Or somebody doing a hack or spam job from your broadband... and the feds come knocking on yer door...

Can you say "wasn't me !" ?
Well , you'll get plenty of opportunity to say that in the interrogation room !

Loads of people think they are secure because they set the router to not advertise it's name... big deal, as soon as your pc starts, it goes "where is XXXXX, where is XXXXX" .. effectively broacasting the name just like the router would have done...

You want your WPA-PSK encryption set with a decent key
You want your Wifi to filter on mac adresses
And you should get that done now, before somebody does someting on your connection that causes you to get in trouble

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by rsNINESOOPER

Hey thats funny...... I do have fun with my wireless, Its called "ffokcuf" cause my idiot neighbors were using it. I change it every 3 months or so cause I think there is a smarty pants in my neighborhood who hacks it. It gets really really slow so the trick is to unplug the box and wait a bit. When that stops working reset the name and password and it works good again. I have called it more explicit names but this one has kinda stuck cause its been working for almost 8 months.

What kind of encryption do you use?

Do not use WEP, it's cracked in no time , the more you use your wifi, the faster it's cracked.

I doubt they can break WPA , so make sure you use that

[id10t]

Originally Posted by svandamme

What kind of encryption do you use?

Do not use WEP, it's cracked in no time , the more you use your wifi, the faster it's cracked.

I doubt they can break WPA , so make sure you use that

WPA is breakable too.

If you are truly worried about this, either run wires or leave wireless open and use a vpn thru it