[ale] wireless sanity/security check

[Mark Wright]

On Jan 4, 2010, at 2:30 PM, Brian Pitts wrote:

> On 01/03/2010 08:14 PM, Mark Wright wrote:
>> I am using a MAC address access list in my router to secure my home
>> network.  I know that you can sniff then spoof  a MAC address but is
>> seems a little overkill to worry about that out here in suburbia.
>>  Especially given no teenagers living within several blocks.
>>
>> I have advised two friends to do the same as their WPA setups quit
>> working or have been uncooperative to additions.
>>
>> Do any of you security experts consider this particularly bad  
>> advise to
>> give out?  Should I help them get WPA working?  After having  
>> played with
>> some of the tools for sniffing and cracking strong passwords I am
>> wondering if it is worth the extra effort.
>
> Do you lock your doors at night, or do you think "there are people  
> with
> tools that can break some locks, so why bother?"
>
I usually lock my doors but I have teenagers that come and go so if I  
find the door unlocked I am not surprised.  That was my whole point  
to asking the question.  Just as like my home no lock will keep out a  
criminal.  All of my doors will give to a good kick.  The reason I  
lock them is so that my family will " feel" safe.  Also my mother in  
law lives up the street and if the door is open she is likely to walk  
in and that has been embarrassing in the past.

I didn't ask the question about wireless security because I thought  
wifi could be intrusion proof.  I just wanted to confirm that giving  
my friends advice to use MAC filtering wasn't real bad advice.   They  
had failed to get WPA working and there were Christmas presents that  
were not being played with.

My opinion is unless you live in an apartment complex or near a  
houseful of teenagers no one is likely to intentionally use your open  
wireless.  I actually secured mine just because I didn't want my  
teenagers putting anything on the network that I didn't know about.

All of the non tech people I know are afraid of not taking their  
computer security seriously.  They all turn to me to be reassured  
that they haven't been hacked or virused.  I usually don't bother to  
explain the risks or the effectiveness of the encryption techniques   
I just tell them what is most convenient for them to hear.  That is,  
I tell them what the goof at Best Buy would tell them.

The problem is both of my friends couldn't get WPA to work.  My  
wife's sister in law was refusing to use her new laptop because her  
husband had turned WPA off to get it on the internet.  I told them  
how to set up MAC filtering over the phone and now she is surfing the  
internet confident that her computer is safe.  Just like she sleeps  
soundly because she doesn't know how easy it is to break into her  
locked house.


> -- 
> All the best,
> Brian Pitts
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