Someone is leaching our wireless network

[plinden]

Half your luck. Now my router shows up as unsecured, even with WEP enabled and on the Windows machine, it keeps flipping back to the neighbour's network...

Have you got this set up yet?

WPA set up should be pretty easy on the Windows machines. All you should have to do is Control Panel/Network Connections, click on your wireless network connection. You should get the status menu. Select "View Wireless Networks", and select the secure connection for your router. Enter the pass phrase you entered when setting up your router (twice).

It should be even easier on the Mac.

I've had no problems connecting three computers to my home network, except for the new Dell my employers gave me. But powering the router off and on solved that (eventually - I didn't think of doing that for a whole day)

I would keep one of the computers connected to the router with an ethernet cable until you get it running, so at least you can access your router's admin.

 

[Danksi]

.....all you had to do was choose a 16 digit alpha-numerical password and you were safe. Bliss.

..errr.. a what?

 

[DanielNTX]

WEP is easily cracked whether 64 or 128 bit. After a few hours of gathering packets I can do a replay of those packets until they are broken giving me the key. MAC address security is also a joke as well, because you can listen to the packets and spoof the MAC address (which can be changed on any Windows machine) and gain entry that way too. WPA Personal is better but not as good, there's still a pre-shared key. WPA2 is better and more secure, but what you really want is WPA with a radius authentication server and then maybe two factor authentication via something like SecurID. Then it wouldn't be worth getting on your network.

 

[AlBDamned]

..errr.. a what?

I mean a simple, straightforward alpha-numerical (or alpha-numeric if you're being pedantic) password with no need to worry about hex digits, ascii or any other rubbish. You just think any letters and numbers you want and off you go. Even with WEP, a regular (non-geek) user gets stumped straight away when it says "Input 10 hexadecimal digits...."

 

[Danksi]

I mean a simple, straightforward alpha-numerical (or alpha-numeric if you're being pedantic) password with no need to worry about hex digits, ascii or any other rubbish. You just think any letters and numbers you want and off you go. Even with WEP, a regular (non-geek) user gets stumped straight away when it says "Input 10 hexadecimal digits...."

Sorry I was being sarcastic, but your last point made my point, that ask my Mum, Sister and some other non-geeks for a alpha-numeric password and they'll ask "what?" - but ask 'em for a password with numbers and letters and they're usually ok about it

I seem to recall my router offered the choice of entering HEX or alpha-numeric for WEP connections.

 

[grapes911]

Sorry I was being sarcastic, but your last point made my point, that ask my Mum, Sister and some other non-geeks for a alpha-numeric password and they'll ask "what?" - but ask 'em for a password with number and letters and they're usually ok about it

I don't know about this. I can't imagine people not understanding the phrase "alpha-numeric". Maybe I'm just giving people way to much credit. I'm going to have to test this out. Be back with my results.

 

[Danksi]

I don't know about this. I can't imagine people not understanding the phrase "alpha-numeric". Maybe I'm just giving people way to much credit. I'm going to have to test this out. Be back with my results.

It's certainly not a phrase I'd use when talking to friends and family, maybe it's just where I'm from.

 

[sparkleytone]

After you select WPA, the only thing you need to set is the Password.

Here is what mine looks like. I hope this helps some:

Please tell me you did not BUY the Talisman firmware. Please...for the love of all that is good and holy...

 

[grapes911]

Please tell me you did not BUY the Talisman firmware. Please...for the love of all that is good and holy...

I roommate did and installed it on our house's router. I haven't used any other version, but this one is really good. I about to purchased one for my home away from college. I'm going to try some of the free ones 1st, but if I don't like them as much, I may go to sveasoft.

 

[AlBDamned]

I wasn’t actually saying the router menu should ask for an ‘alpha-numeric password’, I meant that if it just asked for a password of normal numbers and letters then that would be much more simple.

 

[grapes911]

I don't know about this. I can't imagine people not understanding the phrase "alpha-numeric". Maybe I'm just giving people way to much credit. I'm going to have to test this out. Be back with my results.

Ok, I just asked 10 people if they knew what "alpha-numeric" meant. All of them are probably average when it comes to technology. They can use a computer fairly efficiently, but probably couldn't setup a network without explicit instructions.

3 knew what it referred to passwords that could be numbers and letters.
5 knew if was numbers and letters but did not know that it usually had to do with passwords.
2 had no idea what I was talking about.

I really thought everyone would at least know it was numbers and letters.

PS. I know this isn't scientific at all, but it temporarily satisfies by curiosity.

 

[SiliconAddict]

frequently change your password

I've never understood this train of thought. Changing your password doesn't make it any less likely that someone won't brute force their way into your network. I mean X password is just as likely to be cracked as Y password (With the same characteristics.) over the same period of time after being changed. Unless you expect someone to have already tried 4356gffd! when you change your password so they won't try it again.
As long as you have a secure password (Secure being 9 alphanumeric long, 1 upper case, one numeric character, and one special character.) you should be fine.

For wireless you should be using WEP 128-bit MINIMUM. Even though WEP is crackable in reality most people aren't going to take the time to crack it. Anything lower then 128 can be hacked in a matter of hours. 128-bit takes days and a fair amount of network traffic monitoring.

 

[sparkleytone]

I roommate did and installed it on our house's router. I haven't used any other version, but this one is really good. I about to purchased one for my home away from college. I'm going to try some of the free ones 1st, but if I don't like them as much, I may go to sveasoft.

Do not pay for GPL-violating software. Paying for GPL software that abides by the licensing rules is fine. I won't go into the details as reading this will provide more than enough information.

After using the hacked Talisman software for a couple months, I grew tired of its poor handling of basic things such as DHCP renewal. Every couple weeks I had to power cycle my cable modem. DD-WRT is where its at these days.

 

[bousozoku]

Ok, I just asked 10 people if they knew what "alpha-numeric" meant. All of them are probably average when it comes to technology. They can use a computer fairly efficiently, but probably couldn't setup a network without explicit instructions.

3 knew what it referred to passwords that could be numbers and letters.
5 knew if was numbers and letters but did not know that it usually had to do with passwords.
2 had no idea what I was talking about.

I really thought everyone would at least know it was numbers and letters.

PS. I know this isn't scientific at all, but it temporarily satisfies by curiosity.

The results are not surprising. Most people with whom I've worked are lucky to get the coffee machine working. Language is not a priority, especially if it's not about ordering food.

I remember when I first took programming classes, a lot of people had trouble with the concepts of any kind of categorisation of data. In the U.S.A., it seems that ZIP Codes are still often coded improperly, especially with the ZIP+9 format. If programmers and analysts can't grasp such things well, what hope is there for the general public?

Of course, the proper way to handle it is to give a few examples while the user is entering the information. Most people deal with examples quite well, though some people just repeat them.

 

[Danksi]

The results are not surprising. Most people with whom I've worked are lucky to get the coffee machine working. Language is not a priority, especially if it's not about ordering food.

... common sense, just isn't that common eh!

 

[XNine]

This can be easily beaten by changing your MAC address. Actually what you
proposed here is one of the most common security mistakes, specially when
configuring a firewall. You MUST always allow what you know and block
EVERYTHING else. You MUST NOT allow EVERYTHING and block things you
don't want.

In our case here, he/she must allow only MAC addresses of his/her
machines and block everything else. Of course, MAC access lists should not
be the only security measure taken, but should be used in conjunction with
others (Like WPA...etc.).

For those interested, you can change your MAC address in OS X with the
command "sudo ifconfig interface lladdr newMAC" and in GNU/
Linux with the command "ifconfig interface hw ether interface".
In GNU/Linux you have to bring down the interface before changing the
MAC address (that's is "ifconfig interface down").

I did not intencd this to be a permanant fix, only temporary while he figures out how to configure the router.

Of course, only allowing the MAC address of devices on your local network, and blocking everything else is the way to go. I'm not stupid.

 

[bousozoku]

... common sense, just isn't that common eh!

Yes.

At one job, I was asked to be a part of their technology group. While giving information on translating programme modules from one version of a language to another, I was told by the owner that most of my list was "just common sense" and I agreed. "Most of this we could and should implement today, but my experience tells me that while it's mostly common sense, sense is not all that common." He gave me "the look" and groaned and we proceeded.

 

[EricNau]

I used to have my Airport Express set to WPA and "closed network," but that was before I was given a windows, and I couldn't figure out a way to make Windows xp compativle with WPA, so I took that off and just kept it as a "closed network." How can I make my Windows work with WPA?

And why does the password matter- wheather it's a simple name, or some weird code 64 characters long? They would still have to guess it, right?

 

[Danksi]

I used to have my Airport Express set to WPA and "closed network," but that was before I was given a windows, and I couldn't figure out a way to make Windows xp compativle with WPA, so I took that off and just kept it as a "closed network." How can I make my Windows work with WPA?

Depending how old your Windows machine is, you may have to update the wireless card drivers. I did and then I recall I had to run Windows Update to get it working on WPA. I believe it's a drop-down option under the Wireless Connections in control panel. It's a while since I checked.