A neighbor has a wireless network in his home and a person about 2 blocks away came to him and told him that he knew everytime my neighbor logged onto the internet and helped him setup security and stop broadcasting across his network. We both have become very curious as to how this guy knew this and what did he see on his network that would tell him just exactly whose network was not secure. Curious minds need to know!
Thanks
He has a utility that scans for access points which gives details about what the SSID is, what type of wireless encryption is used, the channel being used and the signal strength. The utility comes with the wireless card but XP comes with a Windows version and Linux comes with a few wireless analyzing tools. SSID broadcasts and lack of encryption allows hackers (or neighbors) easy access to the wireless network. If the type of encryption used is WPA, then SSID broadcasts are not a significant security issue. It is best to secure the wireless network because of possible legal problems due to illegal activities by hackers or neighbors such as copyright infringement (illegal file transfers or music or movies or whatever).
Thanks. I have not done much work with wireless but plan to in the next couple weeks. It's becoming quite popular so I guess I need to get my feet wet.
Thanks
Do you already own a laptop with built in wi-fi? If so you could do a bit of pre-planning by looking for nearby wi-fi signals and learning which channels they are using. You then want to avoid those channels when you set up your system. If you have WinXP get free netstumbler software for this purpose. It's not foolproof and won't find hidden SSIDs but is a good place to start when setting up your wireless network. Netstumbler is probably how your neighbors network was discovered but then other software was used to sniff his traffic.
Thanks for the info. I will be getting a laptop with built-in nic.
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