On The Current State of WiFi Security

An anonymous reader writes "A Flexbeta article covers the basics of WiF security. The article mentions mentions various ways of securing a WiFi network, how easy it is to crack WEP, and what the IEEE is doing about WiFi security. From the article: 'In order to address the security issues of WEP and the current Wi-Fi standards of 802.11a/b/g, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is developing a new standard that is called 802.11i. This standard was developed with security in mind. The new standard implements new security entitled Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which takes advantage of the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), is easier to setup using a pre-shared key, and can use RADIUS authentication.'"

Comments

General Security

[agarrett]

Standard setup for the average home network user seems to be

Take box home
Plug in box
let windows xp do it's thing
Use.

Clearly for these advances to be of any use, customers must be informed of their necessity and setup must be kept as simple as possible (helped, i suprisedly add, by XPSP2's wireless configuration app)
The technology is all well and good, as long as it's being used.

What means this term "wireless security"?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

The problem with wireless isn't people who read Slashdot, it's my parents going down to Best Buy and grabbing a wireless router, plugging it in and using it. Most people don't realize what they're broadcasting, or how easy it is for other people to tap into their home network, nor even why this would be a Bad Thing.

When my folks go to the car lot, they know to look at the Buicks. When they go to Best Buy, they don't know they're looking at the equivalent of a crotch rocket motorcycle that will surely get them killed.

Re:Why should I care?

[Redshift]

Supposing it was a terrorist or a pedophile? How would you like Homeland Security or the FBI knocking on your door, asking you deep questions and impounding all your computer equipment for investigation? The suspicious activity did all originate from your IP address, after all.

And how secure do you think your computer really is? When it is behind your router it has the advantage of being somewhat obscured to the rest of the world by NAT. A hacker inside your own network just has your software firewall to break down - one step closer. Furthermore, if he is able to get access to your router he probably also has access to everything you send - are you sure you want all that to be logged?

You are very naive.

Re:None of which will matter

[B'Trey]

Mind you I don't recommend that you turn on SSID broadcast, or turn off mac addr. filtering, but, these options will diter only novice users from stumbling accidently on your WLAN.

Isn't that the point? If a knowledable and determined hacker wants to break into your network, chances are they're going to succeed unless you're a security expert yourself and highly vigilent.

I could write an article entitled "The six dumbest ways to secure your house." I'd start out with something like: "Locking your front door. People put strong locks on the door, when right next to it you have a windows made of fragile glass! Hello?!? Anyone with a brick can knock out the glass and walk right in!!!"

No, a MAC filter doesn't make your network impregnible. And locking your front door doesn't turn your house into Fort Knox. But if you're not Fort Knox, you don't need to have Fort Knox security. Make breaking into your network and effort and most people want bother. There's likely someone down the street that's broadcasting their SID and has no security at all. Why are they going to bother messing with you?

Re:None of which will matter

[FireFury03]

But security is not about stopping these novice users, who are less likely to cause any damage in the first place

I've got to argue with this - stepping back from the whole wireless thing and talking about security in general, I can tell you that the crackers that cause the most damage are the ones who really don't know what they're doing and have just picked up a cracking toolkit (i.e. script kiddies). The script kiddies frequently end up leaving a machine they've attacked in a completely destroyed state _by accident_ (their intention is to use the machine, not destroy it but frequently it ends up trashed). On the other hand, if your system is attacked by people who know what they're doing the chances are you won't notice for a long time.