Wi-Fi Best Practices Things that we all must do to keep our Wi-Fi networks
secure:
" Most Wi-Fi routers by default have all the security options turned off.
This means that anyone and everyone can use your wireless network without
your knowledge and permission. The first thing that you must and have to
do is turn lots of security options on in your Wi-Fi router.
" If you do not follow what is happening around and your wireless internet
is misused in some ways, you are held personally responsible. People in a
radius of 500 feet in all directions will also be held responsible, thus
it is in your best interest to make sure that there are no insecure
wireless networks in your surroundings. We already have had two cases in a
month where an insecure wireless network has been misused and there will
be more to follow.
" When you access the configuration pages of your router using a web
browser, you will be asked to give a password. Normally the password by
default is either blank or a well known word like admin or password
depending upon the make of the router. Please change the default password,
because even if you have the best security enabled, if a person knows the
router s administrator password, the bad guy would disable the security,
use your internet account with impunity and then re-enable the security.
So, we are saying this again that please change the default password for
the web enabled administrator s account of the router. This is the most
important thing you must and have to do.
" No matter what the manufacturers of wireless routers tell you, one of the
most difficult jobs in the world is to get your wireless router securely
connected to the internet. At times, it has taken us over 3 hours to get
everything right. As the TV ads say, don't do this alone at home, this
applies to configuring routers also. Use expert help.
" The problem with security is that most people do not understand how to
secure a wireless router. You must be very careful when you ask someone
else to secure your router as you have no way of finding out how much they
know. There is no formal qualification that assures enough knowhow on
securing wireless networks anywhere in the world.
" You need to secure your Wi-Fi network for two reasons, one nobody that you
do not approve off should be able to use your internet connection and
second the data that leaves your wireless network must be garbled or
unreadable or to use the right word, be encrypted. If your data does not
leave your computer in an encrypted form, then anyone in a 500 feet radius
could read username and password of your internet account, web mail
account, e-banking account, share broking account, e-commerce account etc
and then may use that information to act as you . He could steal all your
money or read your e-mail or transfer your shares and you would not even
know.
" Think three times before you use a free wireless account or hot spot
because other people can also see what you are doing if the hot-spot is
not properly set up.
" As Windows likes connecting to a wireless network without asking you
first, please make sure that you do not allow anyone else to share your
computer/hard disk. Make sure that sharing is off.
" The computer industry will never get anything right the first time. The
initial method for security for wireless networks is called WEP or Wired
Equivalent Privacy. In plain English this means that WEP can be broken,
WEP is very easy to crack, WEP does not work, WEP is a mistake, WEP is
something that you must not use at all. Even your worst enemies must not
use WEP as it can be cracked at times in 10 minutes flat using free tools
available on the internet. We are saying it again, WEP has nothing to do
with wireless security and the government must ban the use of WEP. Read
our lips, do not use WEP at all. WEP means an insecure wireless network.
" Please use the latest security, which is called Wi-Fi Protected Access or
WPA. You could use WPA or WPA2, which is equally good and it makes no
difference which one you use. As of today, nobody has been able to crack
WPA security. Tomorrow is however another day. Enable WPA on your router
and sleep well at night.
" Normally you would learn a lot of wireless jargon along the way, the full
form is WPA-PSK, PSK is pre shared key. A password that you cannot
remember is a key and pre shared means that your router and the machines
that connect to it have to share or use the same key. We use lots of
jargon for no rhyme or reason.
" Every router has a name by default. It is a good security hygiene to
change this default name of the router or network name. Why should anyone
know what router you are using? The minute a bad guy knows it, he can try
and use a vulnerability on your router and then attack your router. The
less he/she knows about your router the safer you are. This router name or
network name is called the SSID or Secure Set ID. There is nothing secure
about this name nor does it represent a set. We love confusing you by
using words that have no basis in reality at all.
" Every wireless router would broadcast its SSID at regular intervals to
tell wireless clients that they are around. It is a good idea to disable
SSID broadcasts so that bad guys do not know that your router is around.
This would not stop your laptop from connecting to the wireless network as
it has connected in the past and it remembers the SSID of the router.
" This, however, is not a thing that will stop a bad guy from knowing about
your router. A bad guy could use free network sniffers to find out about
the existence of your wireless router. The whole idea is that the more you
stop the bad guy from getting to know about you, the better it is for you
and the safer you are.
" A wireless router creates what is technically called an AP or an Access
Point. The computers that connect to an AP is called a station. A station
along with an AP is called for some weird reason a BSS or Basic Service
Set.
" Every desktop computer or laptop has a wireless card which has a unique
number burned into the card. This number is unique not only on earth but
within the solar system. This number is called the machine number or MAC
address or Ethernet address. Technically MAC is the Media Access Control
address and not machine address but we will not try and get nit picky
about terminology. It is a very good idea to note down the MAC addresses
of all the computers that you will connect to your Wi-Fi router. Then you
must set access control on for your router and instruct it to only allow
those MAC addresses that belong to the machines that you own. No other
machine will be allowed access.
" You must be wondering that when we have WPA security enabled, why do we
need another level of security. The first e-security principle is that we
must never rely on only one layer of security as it will fail one day or
the other. So, always have more than one layer of security active. It is
also called the onion defense, as onions have multiple layers unlike an
egg that has only one layer as a defense mechanism.
" To find out the MAC address, use the command Ipconfig /ALL in a command or
shell prompt. The BSSID is the MAC address of the router.
" There is no such thing as 100% percent security. You may follow all these
rules and yet someone may hack your wireless security. All that we are
doing is lowering the probability of someone breaking your security
defenses. After all people do get killed by lighting but the odds are low.
This is why we would ask you to switch your router off when you are not
using it for a long time.
" Physical protection of your router is also very important. Someone, who
has physical access for say 15 seconds to the router, would use the
cheapest ball point pen and reset your router as the reset button is
normally at the back of the router. This would remove all the security
options you have set and router will restart with no security.
" If you allow a technician to come and change some settings on the router
make sure that he does not steal your passwords or change the security
settings. Trust no one in this world, when it comes to security.
" Most people do not use a computer only to connect to their Wi-Fi router,
they also use mobile phones. I for instance use Internet phone on my
mobile phone to talk to another mobile phone in India and abroad and use
my Wi-Fi connection to do so. It saves a lot of money and the voice
clarity is better. You must understand the security system on your mobile
phone also. You cannot be paranoid enough.
" All machines that connect to the internet using your wireless router are
using your IP address. There is no way for investigators to know which
machine actually sent out the mischief e-mail. This is why the owner of
the router is suspect.
" As wireless routers do not cost a lot of money, for under Rs. 3000, you
can buy a very good router, they have extremely poor logging systems. The
wireless routers find it difficult to save a copy of all traffic that
flows through them. It is a very good idea and something that we must all
do is to turn all the logging and saving of data by the wireless router
on. Some of them have an option of sending you an email of the log data
when the logs get full. The more log data you give the investigators, the
easier you make it for them to catch the culprit. Lots of wireless routers
actually save a copy of all unique computers that have connected to them
in the past. This helps investigators actually pin point all the machines
that were on your network in the immediate past.
" All wireless routers have different ways on configuring security. The
basic principles are what we have enumerated above. The problem is that
their user interfaces are as different as chalk is from cheese. This
confuses anyone, who is trying to configure a router for the first time.
" The latest wireless routers have wizards that help you set them up and
also a one button push security. They claim that the wizard would set up
your router if you simply follow simple steps that a panchivi fail
student can do. They also claim that if you push a button on the router
and computer, security gets set up automatically without human
intervention. All this is true but in our case as the phases of the moon
were not aligned as advertised, things do not work as expected. Use the
latest wizards and one button claims out but bear in mind that it may not
work for you. Like it never works for us. Take claims with a tablespoon of
salt in our line of work.
This is version 1.0 of the security steps you need to take and very soon we will
come back with version 2.0.
Security is a journey which will never end.
It is not a question whether your wireless network will be broken into or not.
The real question is when will it be broken into?
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