Find Whirlpool Deals at Lowe’s
Networking & wireless: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network?
- 9/4/09 12:53 PM
Practically Super Safe
by say592 - 9/4/09 11:25 PM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
WPA2, Mac address filtering, and high security policies on every PC in the network. And all of my additional resources (file server, intranet access, print servers, etc) are password protected (using a variety of passwords).
Obviously its not perfect, but such a thing simply does not exist. Its more than secure enough to protect from my neighbors, and is easily more secure than several business networks I'm frequently visiting (service/expansion, mostly)
Relatively safe
by sallyduncan - 9/5/09 12:14 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
How safe your wireless network is depends on the security you use. I would say that nothing is going to be totally safe. My preference is to restrict users with MAC addresses so that each individual accessing computer with its unique MAC address has to be recognised and accepted by the network 'owner', the person who is setting it up. In itself, this is not enough as MAC addresses can be discovered and another machine can 'masquerade' with that identity, but if used in conjunction with Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) the two options will make your network about as secure as possible.
If you want to be sure of your security, consider old fashioned wired options as well. Sometimes old fashioned can be best. For example, key strokes on a wireless keyboard can be 'read' externally, so wired is better.
Poll response - relatively safe
by davidwheeler - 9/5/09 1:29 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Unsecured network but I live off road deep in the country side and a long way out of range of my neighbours!
David
Not Supersafe
by joppenheim - 9/5/09 1:53 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
A supersafe wireless network would have these properties:
SSID: Non descriptive and non-broadcasting (prior knowledge of the SSID) would be required
Access Encryption: WPA-PSK+WPA2-PSK
Access Password: At least 8 characters long including caps, alpha-numerics and special characters
Access: DHCP would be disabled, with access control lists controlling the exact clients that could connect
Remote WAN Access: Different password with same criteria, using a port that is not within the known used port ranges (such as 80, 8080)
Inbound Connections: This is the most dangerous access point and so, if required, I would utilise port translation, DMZ utilising multiple LANs
Detection Systems: Emailed
Dynamic DNS: Disabled, or at worst, non descriptive.
Is my network like this? No!
Why? Two reasons:
1. These measures are used to hide very sensitive systems/data of which I have little, which inturn reside on secure work stations (firewalls, anti-virus, etc)
2. These measures affect network efficiency with heavier administritive overheads, such as remembering complicated passwords, manually assigned IP addresses for clients, dedicated staff management, etc which is fine if you have the reasons.
It all depends on what you mean by safe
by David Walland - 9/5/09 2:05 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I run my network with WAP2 encryptation MAC address blocking and high levels of Firewall on the router itself. Against the ordinary sort of attempts this should be fine, and because I can think of no significant reason why anyone should want to try to hack our system specifically, I'm prepared to take the risk that this is not good enough against any real professional - why should they bother with mine when there are three other systems in the vicinity which I can see which may well be easier to hack into?
Anyone who believes that *any* encryptation and security is enough to secure their system against concerted attack lives in cloud cuckoo land.
Regards
David Walland
WEP
by issachar5 - 9/5/09 6:34 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
128 bit encryption. I sell part of my wireless pathway for $20/mo to a neighbor about 150 feet away. She has no trouble getting reception, and half of my cost is paid for. This includes cable tv for me. I suppose somebody could find a way to beat the encryption, but anybody who could do that I couldn't stop anyway. And, no, she can't share the code with anyone, I installed the key in her laptop, and she does not have access to it.
Do you have options?
by nbahn - 9/5/09 9:27 AM In reply to: WEP by issachar5check out this link:
http://compudent.blogspot.com/2006/09/wireless-wep-vs-wpa-vs-wpa2.html
Relatively safe
by mjd420nova - 9/5/09 10:53 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I said relatively safe because there really is no super safe as the hackers out there are pretty smart. As soon as someone comes up with a new security program, the hackers make a concerted effort to crack it. Better to have as much as possible but it will only keep the honest people honest and the real crooks will find a way if they think the prize is big enough.
Can it ever be completely secure?
by Jelly Baby - 9/5/09 11:12 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have MAC address filtering enabled on top of the wireless encryption - but I'm sure if someone REALLY wanted to jhack in - they could - eventually!
Which WPA version do you use?
by nbahn - 9/5/09 2:26 PM In reply to: Can it ever be completely secure? by Jelly Babyhttp://compudent.blogspot.com/2006/09/wireless-wep-vs-wpa-vs-wpa2.html
WPA 2 with a random 63 character password is just about as good as it gets.....
Wireless Safe?
by billwild - 9/5/09 4:00 PM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have mine MAC address filtered.
wireless security
by R.Hardie - 9/8/09 6:39 AM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
my son works in the industry, during a recent visit he demonstrated
how easy it was to hack anyone in my area that was using wireless.
i have since hard wired all my equipment
Wireless security
by jdmessano - 9/9/09 1:04 PM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Is "Wireless Security" just an oxymoron then? I thought I was fairly safe using MAC address filtering. Am I living in a fairy world?
Relatively safe.
by Brock Tungsten - 9/13/09 9:19 PM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use WPA -- none of my hardware supports WPA2 -- and MAC filtering. I believe that makes my network less attractive to hack than a less protected system; but, nothing is completely hack proof. I am sure that if someone with the right hardware and software and enough determination wanted to access my wireless connection, he or she could.
Not really safe!
by Gonenuhts - 9/14/09 1:54 PM In reply to: Poll: How safe is your home wireless network? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I think NO Wireless Encryption is safe.
I define safety in Wireless Connection pretty much as the "White Picket Fence Routine": you see a white, knee-high White Picket Fence, surrounding a house; you know you are not supposed to cross it, but if you are up to no good, you will jump it, kick it to ground, or by any means defeat it.
So, if nobody broke WPA2 yet, somebody will sooner or later. Maybe someone already broke it, but they won´t let you know by regular means. Then, you can go back to the WEP encryption: you know it is there, you know you are out of bounds trespassing it, you can violate it if you wished to do so, but you won´t since you are a civilized netizen.
When you apply encryption in a wireless connection, you are just making sure the white picket fence is closed, and if anybody wishes to use that network, they are bound to scratch their knees jumping over it, or trying to fool you in doing it for them.
When WEP encryption was created, it was unbreakable, and sooner done than said, somebody broke it and made it useless.
There it is, a new acronym: WPFWE or White Picket Fence Wireless Encryption. All the defeated wireless encryption protocols should be renamed according to this one, so WEP would now be called WPFWE 1.0.
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
