Wireless Security

Introduction

Wireless, or WiFi, computer network connectivity in the home and business setting can be very useful in that you don't have to run cables from the router / modem to the computer – especially if you use a portable computer you are free to carry around with you.

Furthermore – if you are away from the home or office you can access the Internet via numerous access points offer by coffee shops, hotels, airports, conferences, railway stations, and many other places.

However, due to a number of security issues surrounding the use of the wireless technology, this can cause you serious security problems. Also most wireless products, i.e. routers, network cards, access points, modems, etc, typically come with all the wireless security disabled so that it will “work out of the box”. You must make sure you enable the wireless security.

The home user / office user can have problems of third parties using your wireless connection without your permission, i.e. stealing resources from you, or worse still using your connection for illegal activities so as to hide their tracks. Furthermore they could potentially connect to your computers and steal the data that is on them.

Using public wireless “hot spots” whether they are paid or free can have its own pitfalls as well, especially if you are duped into signing on to a public hot spot and paying for it with your credit card but in fact you may have been duped into handing over your credit card details which are subsequently used to make fraudulent purchases.

In the following sections we shall discuss how to protect yourself whether at home, in the office or outside accessing a public “hot spot”.

If you use a laptop and you do not use wireless make sure it is disabled (using the control panel). You should not leave your wireless laptop set to access point or peer to peer / ad hoc connection since everyone can potentially connect to it without you knowing! As a side note turning of the wireless (if you don't need it) will save power and thus extend a bit the time your laptop will run under battery power.

Note: This assumes that your computer or laptop has be secured to a minimum level as described in the section Minimum Security Steps.

At home / At the office

Ideally you would have already bought recently as in the last 6 months or so an ADSL 2+ modem wireless router with firewall. This should have the latest wireless security installed but it is probably not enabled by default.

f you have an old wireless access point or wireless router or wireless network card we recommend you upgrade to the latest standard. The original wireless security standard was called WEP. It was found in 2001 that the security could be easily broken, worse still, you can download from the Internet software that a child could drive without understanding how it is breaking the security and you could eavesdrop on the wireless connection or worse still connect to the network illegitimately.

The wireless industry took several steps to try and improve the situation by first introducing, WPA-TK and then WPA2.

If you buy a wireless product make sure it is at least WPA if not WPA2 – most recent wireless routers on the market today are WPA2. If you use the old wireless products with no security or with WEP security you must realise that you are not protected!
So when you buy your new ADSL 2+ wireless modem firewall router, you should as part of the set up either completely disable the wireless bit of it (using the set up menu) or if you enable the wireless since you want to use the wireless, then you must enable the WPA /WPA2 security with a very strong pass phrase as minimum. By strong pass phrase we mean about 96 characters or maximum key length that the manufacturer allows. Also set it so that the keys are automatically updated every 5 minutes or quicker.

Note: It might also be an idea to change the default channel that the wireless is transmitting on from the factory default since this will significantly improve your connection – since all your neighbours will be running on the factory default channel and thus unwittingly interfering with your wireless connection and thus dramatically reducing its performance. This can be done through the web interface to the wireless router's set-up / configuration page.

If your computer / laptop can connect to a wireless network without you having to do anything special (at least once setting up the key), then probably you are running your computer wireless connection without any security!
If you use a wireless connection it is vital that you install a software firewall on your computer.