One of the ladies I work with was talking about how she set up a wireless network in her house. She was very pleased with herself until her son made her nervous by pointing out some of the security issues surrounding wireless networks. I had to agree with her son because I had just gotten back from a hacking conference and it was scary how easy some people can penetrate a wireless connection.
After I returned home I started to do reseach on how to harden up my wireless security. I discovered a few facts that need to be followed to provide minimum security on a wireless network:
1. Try to use Enhanced WEP if your router supports it instead basic 128bit WEP. WEP is regarded as much easier to compromise than E-WEP.
2. Setup MAC filtering (media access controller not apple macs) so that only the computers that you own will be allowed to access the network. Each computer network interface has a unique address. If you only allow or “trust” those addresses it makes it harder for unauthorized people to access your wireless network.
3. I would also disable DHCP and manually assign an IP address to each computer on the network so that random computers won’t receive a automatically receive a network address from the wireless router.
4. Also turnoff the SSID broadcast so that your network’s identity won’t be broadcast to the world. If some doesn’t know that your network is out there it makes it harder for them to get unauthorized access.
5. If you have a choice, try and postion the wireless router in the center of you house or apartment so that the signal won’t be broadcast too far from the confines of your home. Granted this is harder in apartment buildings, but you should try anyway.
6. Make sure that you pick a decent password for your router and other devices. If a intruder can compromise your router all the other steps are worthless. A good password contains no words or phrases in ANY LANGUAGE, is at least 6-8 characters long, contains a mix numbers and letters, and contains upper and lower case characters.
The reason that I say this is not to be paranoid. Someone might not want to access your files but just use your network to do some scandalous shit. For example, imagine if have neighbors that have unsecured wireless networks and whenever you want to download some bit torrents that could get you sued you use their connection. When the RIAA or MPAA come a suing it will be the unprotected neighbor that is gonna catch a case and not the intruder.
Be aware, be safe. I told ole girl to treat her network like I treat my dick , just strap it up.