how safe is wireless internet

[Andy_1984]

last night i was looking for a packet sniffer so i couyld create a new chat application for yahoo+vox and i came across a few sites with wireless decoders.

 

you would probably not believe how easy it is for me to grab stuff out of the air like passwords, emails, yahoo, icq, aim, msn messages and anything else you submit on the internet out of the airwaves i dont even need to be connected to you to do this. for obvious reasons i wont mention the sites but it is easy to find them if you think about it.

 

and even some of these will get your packets they will also crack your wep key in a day while its done stealing all your personal information then someone can easily get onto your network and do even more investigating. even credit card details could be grabed out of nowhere.

 

so now i am convincing my boss and colleges to go back to wired and ditch the wireless router, its just not safe. after all what are a few wires compared to being owned.

 

i could go a trip down glasgow town centre with my pda with wireless and steal all the large businesses sensitive information and come back in about an hour with some information on where they go, even things they purchase and perhaps even company website and get passwords and reak some havoc.

Edited January 25, 2007 by Andy_1984

[Squiffy]

Well, I work with several large companies, as an IT Support Technician.

 

NONE of them use W/Less for the reasons you rightly give!

 

Ok for a home enviroment, provided that you have NO sensitive info on your PC's....but I agree, wired is by far the best.. but well dodgy otherwise!

Edited January 25, 2007 by Squiffy

[pikergonecarpin]

last night i was looking for a packet sniffer so i couyld create a new chat application for yahoo+vox and i came across a few sites with wireless decoders.

 

you would probably not believe how easy it is for me to grab stuff out of the air like passwords, emails, yahoo, icq, aim, msn messages and anything else you submit on the internet out of the airwaves i dont even need to be connected to you to do this. for obvious reasons i wont mention the sites but it is easy to find them if you think about it.

 

and even some of these will get your packets they will also crack your wep key in a day while its done stealing all your personal information then someone can easily get onto your network and do even more investigating. even credit card details could be grabed out of nowhere.

 

so now i am convincing my boss and colleges to go back to wired and ditch the wireless router, its just not safe. after all what are a few wires compared to being owned.

 

i could go a trip down glasgow town centre with my pda with wireless and steal all the large businesses sensitive information and come back in about an hour with some information on where they go, even things they purchase and perhaps even company website and get passwords and reak some havoc.

 

Wep is particularly east to crack, the 40bit is useless, even the 128 isn't that hard. This is why most folks are starting to use WPA instead.

 

Paul.

[corydoras]

last night i was looking for a packet sniffer so i couyld create a new chat application for yahoo+vox and i came across a few sites with wireless decoders.

 

you would probably not believe how easy it is for me to grab stuff out of the air like passwords, emails, yahoo, icq, aim, msn messages and anything else you submit on the internet out of the airwaves i dont even need to be connected to you to do this. for obvious reasons i wont mention the sites but it is easy to find them if you think about it.

 

and even some of these will get your packets they will also crack your wep key in a day while its done stealing all your personal information then someone can easily get onto your network and do even more investigating. even credit card details could be grabed out of nowhere.

 

so now i am convincing my boss and colleges to go back to wired and ditch the wireless router, its just not safe. after all what are a few wires compared to being owned.

 

i could go a trip down glasgow town centre with my pda with wireless and steal all the large businesses sensitive information and come back in about an hour with some information on where they go, even things they purchase and perhaps even company website and get passwords and reak some havoc.

 

 

Well, I work with several large companies, as an IT Support Technician.

 

NONE of them use W/Less for the reasons you rightly give!

 

Ok for a home enviroment, provided that you have NO sensitive info on your PC's....but I agree, wired is by far the best.. but well dodgy otherwise!

If you are using WPA you should be fine. Cracking WPA is difficult and any enterprise using wireless should not be using WPA-PSK but should be using a RADIUS server. I to am a IT Technician who has been using wireless for a long time with no security issues like those you describe.

 

In a nutshell.

Change your default SSID and don't broadcast it. (Broadcasting your SSID is not really a security risk, but it can cause a bit of bandwith loss)

 

If you must use WEP use 128 bit, but you will be more secure if you don't use WEP, use WPA instead. Make sure you have a nice long complicated WPA key too. If you are using wireless in an enterprise then you should be looking at WPA/WPA2 with RADIUS.

[chesters1]

it reminds me when digital phones were introduced and the sellers saying how safe they were ,well till the next day when the software that cracked it was imported ,nothings safe as by the time it arrives on our shores its already obselete.

smart cards and their chips were cracked in a few days and most of our banks still use them! , i have a reader writer 10 years old somewhere i used for uncrackable porn channels on satellite.

theres thousands of folks uncracking things out there than ever designed it in the first place and hundreds far smarted than the designers could wish to be.

 

its a bit like virus software they are always updating their software to counter viri already out there ! thet'r not making perfect software that could stop it being introduced in the first place.

Edited January 25, 2007 by chesters1

[Clifftop]

I wish i knew what you were talking about.

[Andy_1984]

I wish i knew what you were talking about.

 

yeah right, tell it to the judge

 

but er incase you realy dont, you know wireless internet, well if you can use your computer to connect to wireless internet then you can use it to see what other people are doing on their own wireless internet. basicly its like watching over someones shoulder while they are surfing the net but they dont know you are there and the way you see what they are doing is a little bit like neo matrix code stuff

[Clifftop]

yeah right, tell it to the judge

 

but er incase you realy dont, you know wireless internet, well if you can use your computer to connect to wireless internet then you can use it to see what other people are doing on their own wireless internet. basicly its like watching over someones shoulder while they are surfing the net but they dont know you are there and the way you see what they are doing is a little bit like neo matrix code stuff

 

Thanks Andy

B****y hell, i knew what wireless was but i didn't know that other stuff, we are going wireless at the end of the month.

Have to start asking questions i suppose. ( should have done that first eh )

[corydoras]

Thanks Andy

B****y hell, i knew what wireless was but i didn't know that other stuff, we are going wireless at the end of the month.

Have to start asking questions i suppose. ( should have done that first eh )

Read my post above. If you do what I suggest the chances of someone eavesdropping on you are minimal.

[Steve Walker]

The other thing to consider is how much security you need; are you doing anything that it's worth someone else's time and effort to crack? The obvious concern is online purchasing, but all communications passing sensitive data should be encrypted using SSL. Cracking the wire protocol doesn't really get you very far if the communications are encrypted. There is the risk of someone compromising your network to gain access to your machines. Are your machines secure? Is there anything on them worth stealing? Then there is the risk of someone simply stealing your bandwidth or using your internet connection or your computers to do something illegal or against your terms of service. Again, what's the risk? Where do you live, how many neighbours are within range, what sort of people are they? Is your next door neighbour likely to be a dishonest spamming paedophile IT genius?

 

Personally, for home use, I think there are so many wide open networks that just taking the simple precautions corydoras describes will make you an unattractive target.