Newbs & Wireless

It continues to amaze me, almost halfway into 2006, that there isn't a more concerted effort by linksys and other major players for home market wireless routers, to make people aware of wireless security.

The other day I was I detected wireless entworks simply driving around with a laptop with built in wireless detection, through out the course of 3-4 hours in 10 towns, about 200 wireless networks have default login/password to their GATEWAY.

For new comers that don't know, when you setup a router, and just let it run with default configuration, a person can just do ipconfig /all in command prompt, or the equivalent in linux (which I do not know), and look for the gateway.

That is the wireless router serving out the dhcp in their usually

192.168.x.x network. If gateway = 192.168.1.1 simply http://192.168.1.1 and login with default credentials of the major makers, ie: linksys/netgear/d-link etc. You can find out the default login/passwords for these by pulling up the manuals for the respective routers on the manufacturer websites.

Baffled. . . .

Can lock people out of their own router. Some people have in un- masked form, their email address and password in some configurations, where DSL requires it. Then imagine where you can go from there. . . scary

Companies now need to have some sort of complex protection auto enforcement instead of letting shit go default, a nice and easy to use automated GUI process, instead of letting the users do it, when the users themselves just leave it alone (not due to laziness) because their clueless.

:) __________________________________________________

3:16
Reply to
Anonymous
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Why would they? It'll needlessly complicate people's view of The Wonderful World of WiFi, and doesn't add anything to the bottom line. Their marketing efforts are focussed on getting people to throw out their {b,g,proprietary high-speed} gear and buy new (Pre-, Draft-, and soon Real-) N gear.

The marketplace (Joe Sixpack, his mother, and probably all of our mothers) doesn't know or care about security, they want it to work, and turning on security frequently _doesn't_ help...

This is a constant discussion here (Google News is your friend), and there aren't any good answers.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

It's all so that users get a good "works right out of the box experience". The problem is it's all to easy to "loose your internet connection" if you make a mistake setting up the security settings. That results in a call to customer services which costs the company money to handle.

The very process of enabling encryption involves you loosing the ability to talk to the routers set up page (eg until you enable encryption in your PC). That sort of thing is enough to cause the average consumer a heart attack.

What's needed is a wizard that runs on the PC and configures the security at both ends of the wireless link for you. I guess that wouldn't be hard for them to provide.

Reply to
CWatters

"CWatters" hath wroth:

Duh... Haven't you seen the promotions for all the "one button easy setup" programs? Run the software, push the button on the router, and it sets up a unique SSID and WPA keys on both ends. Linksys calls theirs "SecureEasySetup". |

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Other vendors have different names for basically the same idea. I'm not a big fan of this method, but the vendors are most certainly trying their best to improve security.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

It would seems not. Neither of the two routers I purchased over the last year came with such a prog. Nor did the Access point I got last week.

Reply to
CWatters

I was surprised to see this too on my new Buffalo router/bridges (AOSS is the trademark for these).. I wonder if they're interoperable...

(doesn't matter, don't use it with WDS anyways)

But still, any network setup 'wizards' running on a new router should force the change of password as part of the configuration process.

Reply to
hennessy

snipped-for-privacy@earl-grey.cloud.net (hennessy) hath wroth:

My guess is they originated from the same company but has had "proprietary enhancements" added to provide for "vendor distinction". In other words, they probably were at one time compatible, but no longer.

SES and AOSS have nothing to do with WDS. All they do is setup the initial SSID and WPA keys. All the other complex setting still have to be setup manually.

This is one of my pet peeves. Search the Google archives for "secure by default" for my multiple pontifications on the topic. For example: |

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I think AOSS and SES add an additional layer of complexity to the router which could be eliminated if the routers were shipped secure by default and required the manual initialization of passwords, SSID, and WPA keys on initial setup. If these are bypassed, the wireless section is turned off. If someone wants to run an insecure system, they have to intentionally set it for zero security, not just open the box and plug it in.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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