How to ensure the safety of Wi-Fi?

Hi all,

How to ensure the safety of Wi-Fi with notebook?
It seems that Wi-Fi is automatically connected to internet.

Thanks in advance
:)

I'm not sure what you're asking, but I think you might want to setup some WPA protection on your router..

it is not automatically connected. you can tell your connection manager that it only connects to network you created profiles for, for example.

And MAC-address blocking.

MAC addresses can be faked, but I don' t think anyone will go through the hassle of doing it just do hack into a home network. So turn on Mac filtering anyway. Add WPA2 encryption and hide the SSID of the network.

And if you are -really- paranoid, make sure that clients can only connect to your network through a VPN gateway.

The safest thing, however, is to switch off WLAN entirely. :)

Use WPA with a long key and use a mac address access list and it should be a veritable fortress.

Sure. But they're 281474976710656 different possible combinations. Brute forcing that would take more time than one would sensibly spend trying to penetrate a Wifi network.

Puki is near your house.

With a WiFi connection.

Puki has a lot of time.

You don't brute force in a situation like that. You watch the packets go by and wait for a machine with a valid MAC address to connect. Then you use their MAC address.

As for hiding the SSID, it doesn't actually help. The SSID is still being broadcasted - just not in beacon packets.

For a home network, WPA 1 or 2 with a nice, long key is generally sufficient. MAC filtering can be enabled, but is not necessary. Hiding the SSID is optional, but I typically discourage it.

At my house, I use WPA with a 63-character key. I don't hide my SSID.

You can't "watch packets go by", without being on the network in the first place.

Yes, actually you can. It's wireless. You sniff the traffic. The traffic is encrypted (poorly, in the case of WEP), but the MAC addresses are not.

EDIT: Here's a tool that can do it. - http://www.kismetwireless.net

You can, There are tools that 'sniff' raw data out of the air, wether its encrypted or not.

I believe the only part of the data stream that is not encrypted (if using encryption that is) is the mac address (although you may want to double check me on that one).

As i said before if you want very secure use WPA and a mac address access list. Someone would need to sniff your key (very difficult with WPA, not so hard using WEP esp. 64bit) and then as well as doing all that they need to spoof the address as well. (just to add some more headache factor :)

Hiding the SSID will not hide it from anyone who knows how to do the above (very few), so it is relitively pointless. However it is handy if you dont want joe user next door, or some common thief & his PDA to know you have a PC in your house.

Sure. But the network isn't going to work reliably if you two identical MAC addresses on it. You're going to get the other persons packet responses (and in the case of Winsock, probably crash Windows), certainly screwing up the TCP/IP stack, making that particular attack useless as anything but a DoS attack. Unless you want to sit around and wait for them to switch off their computer.

The attack works fine, and is actually very common. It is certainly much cleaner if you can knock the other guy off the network, but that is not necessary. Your connectivity will be unreliable while both machines with the same MAC are active, but it is still there. Your best bet is to pick a machine that isn't too talkative, minimizing the chances that you'll step on each other's toes.

The biggest down side is that since the DHCP will normally assign you the same IP address as the other guy, they may get a message telling them about the IP conflict. If they're a smart user, it might tip them off to your presence. But then again, if they're a smart user, you probably wouldn't be there in the first place...