Linksys WRT54GL
Is your data or bandwidth being stolen? Many of us run home networks, with wireless being a popular choice. It’s so much easier to set up a decent wireless network than to deal with running cable and installing jacks in a house that’s not already wired.
How do you know your data is secure? How do you know someone isn’t nearby with an aluminum can picking up your signal, or your data? There are ways to get geeky on this subject, with spectrum analyzers and so forth. I like to keep it simple.
You may have read various articles on how to secure your home wireless network. People will tell you to turn off broadcasting of your SSID, use WEP or WPA, change your channel from default, and so forth. Not all of these are bad suggestions, but let me clarify what’s important to have a safe home networking experience.
SSID broadcast
It doesn’t matter. It won’t hurt to turn it off, but I’m not sure it really helps at all. Anyone can download free software such as NetStumbler to see all SSIDs nearby, whether or not they are being broadcast.
WEP vs. WPA vs. ?
You must always use the highest form of encryption available. Some people would use WEP to be compatible with older hardware. I say get rid of your older hardware! Use only WPA2 with AES. Black-hat hackers have software such as coWPAtty that can crack WPA with PSK/TKIP encryption in about 5 minutes. WPA2 with AES would take at least 2 weeks for most crackers to crack, depending on the length of your password.
Using complex passwords
Definitely change the default admin password for your router. When it ships, everyone and their brother know the passwords for all the DLink, Linksys, and other home routers out there. If a hacker can get into your router, they can change the entire configuration in it and lock you out. Fortunately you have the upper-hand with physical access to the router. You can simply reset it back to factory defaults, and then change the default admin password like you should have in the first place!
Do complex passwords work? Yes and no. I recommend them because mere words will be cracked faster due to “dictionary attacks” in which software quickly rips through huge lists of words, including character replacement, which means using a @ for an “a”, and a ! or 1 for the letter I or L. However, if your password isn’t long enough, it is still very quick to crack it. Therefore, I recommend passwords of at least 14 characters.
One easy way I come up with complex passwords is to think of a song you’ll remember. Pick a line from that song and use the first letter from each word in the lyrics. Then I usually alternate upper and lower case, inject some numbers and/or special characters in the middle of it, and if it’s not long enough, add familiar characters on the end.
For example, take the familiar Beatles song, “Revolution”. “You say you want a revolution…” I would make a password out of this by taking the first letter of each word, alternating between upper and lower case, and we have a good start, “YsYwAr”. From that we can add on numbers such as 1812, and perhaps a quick keyboard flurry of special characters such as holding Shift and hitting 1,2,3 then 2,3,4 or something like that.
We now have YsYwAr1812!@#@#$, which is a 16-character password and much more difficult to crack than “springtime2010″ or something of that nature. Another important factor is to change your password frequently. In wireless networking, there are 2 passwords of primary concern.
The first is the administrative password to the wireless router. Make this strong, long, and change it once or twice a year. We also have the wireless access key, pre-shared key, or wireless password. This one can be rebuilt by hackers slowly depending on how much traffic goes between your PC and the wireless router. Therefore, we want to change this more frequently.
Change your wireless key every 2 weeks if you’re paranoid, but try to change it at least every 1-3 months. Yes, this means changing it on every device that connects to it, your PS3, your Wii, all your wireless PCs, etc. This article is about being secure, not being lazy!
Safe computing everyone!
