Protect Your Wi-Fi From Intruders

This article on the St.Petersburg Times indicates that arrest was made in the case of an intruder using an open wireless network.

Police say Benjamin Smith III, 41, used his Acer brand laptop to hack into Dinon’s wireless Internet network. The April 20 arrest is considered the first of its kind in Tampa Bay and among only a few so far nationwide.

Of course, it doesn’t take much to “hack” into a wireless network as, by default, virtually all wireless access points come with no security options turned on. The access points come in a default state which leaves them vulnerable by way of providing access to any wireless NIC out there. So all you need is a laptop/computer with a wireless NIC and you can get free Internet service.

Wireless access has grown by leaps and bounds mainly due to the ease of access and to eliminate the need of wires. You could now roam around your house with your laptop or any other device (PDA, etc.) and have Internet access at your fingertips.

This also means that nearly anyone else in the vicinity of your access point as the same abilities. The mechanisms to protect yourself from such intruders are already present in all access points, you just have to know how to set it up.

• The first and foremost thing is to change the SSID (service set identifier) to something hard to guess or understand. Don’t make it your name, address or anything relevant. But this doesn’t in any way restrict people from getting onto your service, but at least you aren’t broadcasting information about yourself.
• WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is something that everyone should enable and provides a layer of protection by encrypting information between your computer and the access point.
• Adding a password to access the Internet service is not a bad idea.
• MAC based filtering is a great way of ensuring that only known entities can access the wireless network. This can be a little cumbersome as you will have to manually enter each MAC address into a table to allow access, but it provides the greatest amount of security as MAC addresses are globally unique. That is, there is only ever one NIC with a given MAC address, the address is never re-used.

These should at least protect you from intruders.

Moral Dilemma
But, the dilemma arises upon the arrest that was made in this case. If someone were to ignore the steps above and leave their access point open to virtually everyone and someone else comes across it, by mistake, who is to be blamed? I realize that driving around in your SUV with a laptop and actively searching for wireless access might be borderline illegal, but finding it in other ways, neighbors and so on, might be something that wouldn’t necessarily be illegal.

Cheers

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