Watch your wi-fi connections..

Wendell wrote a short paper on how to close up your local wifi so local drive-by phishers can't snoop on your stuff or piggy-back your connection.
Perhaps he can dig it up and re-post it.

It is a sad thing that designers don't seem to think about hackers before introducing a new internet capability, then work to find band-aids after the fact.

Any major web operation (like Facebook) should have figured out from the beginning that unencrypted traffic would eventually lead to problems.

The article indicates one easy thing to do if you are running your own WiFi - make sure you have WPA and not WEP encryption.

Really! I'd like a link to that paper!

Sadly, I don't remember writing that and I can't seem to find anything. Can you give me some clues?

3 or 4 years ago an unsecured WiFi connection appeared at my neighbor's house.

I went over to talk to my 80-something neighbor about it and he said his son-in-law who is an IT expert set it up so it must be OK don't you know (all he did was change the SS ID from Netgear to the neighbor's last name). The neighbors both died but the heirs still own the house and now it has an unsecured WiFi but the SS ID is simply the factory "Netgear" presumably set up by the so-called IT expert.

This amazes me.

You posted it (maybe 5 or 6 years ago) on POB.
Perhaps it was wireless in-house setups.
Maybe bluetooth.
I remember it being quite specific and thorough.

Nice QR code.

You've been successfully scanned via Moto Droid.

I remember a post listing several recommended steps which I used.

* Change your SSID
* Make your SSID invisible. I used this for several years but in the past year or so I have to keep it on because the computers can't seem to find it anymore with it off (it used to work fine).
* Use WPA encryption.

Those three are from memory; I can't remember the others. You can also limit access to specific MAC addresses. A co-worker has a more modern router that has more robust monitoring software apparently. He says he can see who is using it at any given time which I can't do as far as I can tell. I have a slightly older Linksys.

I don't remember the poster but it definitely could have been Wendell.

Nice QR code.

🙂

I found this:

> I have been enlightened and thought many of you fine folks may appreciate this: "WarDriving" is a new term in this high-tech age which entails anyone with a wireless and GPS-capable laptop or Pocket PC driving around finding open wireless networks and recording their locations. You may not even realize that your wireless network is unsecure. Most people don't. If you bought your wireless router and set it up straight out of the box, you probably don't have any security features setup, like WEP, WPA or MAC Filtering. If this is the case, you should look into it. I recently purchased a laptop computer with wireless capabilities built-in. I installed a little program called NetStumbler, turned the antenna on and drove to work this morning. What I discovered on this 15-mile drive (much of which is not even residentially zoned) blew me away. I logged 46 Access Points (AP), 30 of which had no security settings whatsoever. If I had stopped the car, I could have browsed their networks (however, I did not do this). One of them was a local coffee house. So I thought you might appreciate this heads up. I did see on a couple websites last night where hackers are using these unsecure networks to send viruses and such. You should make sure you have secured your wireless network. Scary stuff. Go to www.wardriving.com and you'll see what I mean.

Personally I had wi-fi, enjoyed it and had it locked down via a random computer generated password of over 100 characters (copy pasta is so nice). I ended up giving up wireless for the speed and security of a network switch. If ya got wi-fi, don't forget to change the routers default admin panel password!

I use the wired connection as much as possible. I have a desktop computer, ran a cable to it. I have cable hookups on my desk.

My daughter is all WiFi; I haven't changed that yet but we turn it off at night.