wireless connections...whos right and whos wrong?

[Graphics2u]

oh ok! think i get the mac address bit now. so this seems crazy! if you have an unsecured wireless connection, someone can get onto your connection, do whatever they want, download whatever they want and will never get traced??? man alive, thankfully we've always had secure wireless!!!!!!

Pretty much. If any of the activity was traced it will show the IP address of his home wireless network. By then who ever it was could be long gone, unless it's just someone in the neighborhood. But it could be someone sitting out in the street with a laptop or a smart phone logged on to his network.

 

[Graphics2u]

I just moved in to a new apartment and haven't setup my internet yet, but my wireless picks up two unsecured networks that both connect to the internet with full cable modem speeds ... I could easily go on there and download anything I wanted and monitor when their computers are connected to the internet and probably with a quick google search could figure out how to get their private info if I was interested. Definitely a bad idea to leave that unsecured ... even if a person isn't stealing your info or downloading illegally, I'm sure my netflix watching over the last couple days had to suck up a bit of their bandwidth. I get my own connection tomorrow and you better believe it will be secured first thing.

but your neighbors have been so nice to you, don't you want to share back?

 

[round man]

In tech school My field of study was network security,...one of our assignments was to hack into these "unsecured" wireless access points with an ipod,..yes an ipod not an ipad,...there are many ways to hack ionto a wireless router even with basic wep encryption installed,...the only way to be sure your wireless router is secure is to use wpa or later versions of the wpa security encryption because it takes alot more than the average pc's computing power to break the encryption for wpa rather than the simple hacks(among many others freely available on the net) used to break wep encryption,...we hacked wep encryption in less than half an hour using airocrack linux live cd's in class as an assignment,....

 

[choucove]

In tech school My field of study was network security,...one of our assignments was to hack into these "unsecured" wireless access points with an ipod,..yes an ipod not an ipad,...there are many ways to hack ionto a wireless router even with basic wep encryption installed,...the only way to be sure your wireless router is secure is to use wpa or later versions of the wpa security encryption because it takes alot more than the average pc's computing power to break the encryption for wpa rather than the simple hacks(among many others freely available on the net) used to break wep encryption,...we hacked wep encryption in less than half an hour using airocrack linux live cd's in class as an assignment,....

Airocrack has become quite readily available in many different places.

One of my employees was discussing with his class how insecure most wireless networks are in our area (our primary ISP in town is terribly infamous for terribly configured routers in dangerously important locations like medical and legal offices!)

To give an example, he was able to use just his phone to crack a WEP connection they set up on their test wireless router. Then, since the great majority of wireless routers are just using their default settings, he was able to do just as explained above and log in, change administrative passwords, and completely lock out the end user from network access and have complete control of their network devices as well. They were able to see all the computers set up in the test network, all shared information, and a ton of information!

 

[round man]

Choucove is right any folder,file or drive that is shared or has sharing permissions checked is viewable by simply clicking on the map network drive in windows explorer or my computer window in windows once you've broke into the network via an unsecured router,,....in some cases the viewer can delete and actually move the files and or hide them from the owner if they are stupid enough to leave them unprotected

 

[Dice]

Your Correct Rush, he should never have an unsecured network.

Those downloads would be traced back to him, and anyone intent on doing him harm would be, most likely, smart enough to cover their tracks using a local proxy to hide their true mac address.

Heard of a network bridge? Easy to spoof and never traced. Doesn't even have to be near. Network signals can be picked up miles a way. I have a friend that gets free internet from a town 10 miles a way by connecting a high gain wireless antenna to an old satellite dish. So don't think they have to be close.

Also an unsecured network means it's unencrypted. All you have to do is hook into the network, turn the NIC card on Promiscuous mode and you get to see all the traffic on that network. Grab a network sniffer and you'll see in clear plain text, every "website" he's visiting, every password not using https he's using, every "Video" he's watching.

Rule of thumb:

- Don't use wireless unless you have to.
- Use WPA2 with a long key, it's the most secure but still crackable given enough time.

Don't believe how insecure wireless is? Try hacking your own:

http://lifehacker.com/5305094/how-to-crack-a-wi+fi-networks-wep-password-with-backtrack

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-howto/30278-how-to-crack-wpa--wpa2

 

[Techman]

I know of one person operating a online library for graphics files.
He is in jail.
Someone was using his server to store kid portn. So it is not smart to leave yer system open. Then he was able to get some relief from that charge but the usage of cracked software also got him some time..

 

[DizzyMarkus]

Set an old pc up and start d-loading movies on his width :0) -- wont belong hell secure it hehe

Markus

 

[visual800]

Well you warned him and he doesnt care, screw it! Not your problem

 

[SightLine]

Proper wireless security uses a combination of things. The most important (most decent access points / wireless routers support it) is to disable broadcasting of it's SSID. Then WPA2 with AES encryption and PSK authentication (or RADIUS but that requires a server setup). With the SSID not broadcast computers will not simply see the connection, you have to manually add a connection and type the name in.

 

[ucmj22]

you can clone/change your Mac address.

 

[Mike F]

Quick question... is it more secure to plug your PC directly into the ethernet port on your router instead of connecting wirelessly? I always felt like it is so that's what I do, but was never really sure if it mattered.

 

[jhanson]

Quick question... is it more secure to plug your PC directly into the ethernet port on your router instead of connecting wirelessly? I always felt like it is so that's what I do, but was never really sure if it mattered.

Much, much more secure. For someone to sniff packets on your network, they would actually have to be physically connected.

You would have to actually turn off wireless at the router, however, to be completely secure.

If you really want to be anal about it, unplug all your computing hardware from the Internet and place it into a shielded Faraday cage inside a bank vault. Nobody's getting through THAT easily

 

[Tigertron]

Wireshark is a better hacker tool than omnipeek IMHO and allows MAC spoofing. your neighbor is a hackers wet dream. There are many like him though. I once wanted to get into wireless security but quickly found out that most people don't care about it and the ones that do don't like to pay for something they can't see or use.

When I'm on the road I like to spend my hotel time hacking the network. You would be suprised what is essentially the backdoor left open. Most people don't know that email programs like outlook don't send passwords encrypted. It's just plain text. I'm not a malicious hacker. I just snoop. It's like when your garage door open. I won't steal anything but I'll look to see what you have.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

ok, had a conversation with my neighbor yesterday on this subject. i noticed when we turn on our computers at our house there are several unsecured wireless connections that pop up. we have our own secured wireless connection. i noticed his was one of the unsecured ones and i knew it was his because its registered with his last name as rhe wireless connection.

he was outside yesterday and i went over and said that we pickup his connection and its unsecured. i told him he should secure it as he didn't want someone going around connecting to his unsecured wireless connection and down loading illegal content or even tapping into his network and getting information from his computers etc.

he laughed at this and said it was all bs that, that could happen! i explained that his wireless connection will have a registered ip address, so anyone down loading or doing anything illegal on his network will be traced back to him and thats nothing to laugh about! he then said that its all to do with mac address's and that he would be all good if anything happened due to the mac address on his computers being different etc.

basically his argument was this> someone use's his wireless connection for illigal stuff, the computer that they are using has a permentant mac address on it and if they happen to then move along to there own wireless back home and go onto there own network with that same computer the mac address is still the same so it can be traced to them.

now, i don't know much about mac address's so i could really comment, however, i said i doubt very much its as easy to trace a computer as that! and due to ip address's which would still have been registered to his network thats where the problem would be etc.

so, is he right in his thinking? i still told him to secure his network but he thinks he knows it all and its all good!.............ah well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQxhOYqLPdY

Mac address is just tied as the wireless cards address, it is hard wired, but has no identifiable information in it. It is solely for being able to block/allow users onto a network easily ... think a hard wired username. there is nothing to trace a mac address, and a user can rip the card out, get anotherone and done.

http://youtu.be/wvckTO-T04Q this is a great thing to show your neighbor.

Really the only way to prevent people from randomly messing your life up is just to add a simple password to the wireless. Sometimes I only allow certain MAC address to access the router as well ... prevents someone from brute force password hacking the router.

 

[round man]

I keep reading that each computer has it's own mac address here and feel as though I must add a correction to that concept that is factually correct,...the mac address is a machine specific address to the "NIC" (network interface card or adapter) not the pc,...in other words each network adapter has its own mac address as well as router,cell phone ,modem or any other piece of equipment that would need access to any network,...the pc itself does not utilize a mac address just it's network adapter,...thus if you have more than one adapter such as a lan and a wireless adapter on a laptop there will be two separate distinctive mac addresses for one machine,...one for each network adapter