Wireless security linksys home system

I have one laptop computer and am using a new linksys wrt54g router. Have been researching and made changes to the router config to "make it safer"

I run ZA as my firewall and run anti virus and spyware programs as well.

The real question for me is, If you are doing the right things is wireless as safe as hardwired?

Reply to
jcgc50
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What changes?

Good enough. However, none of these will protect you against someone sniffing your traffic and capturing your passwords, credit card numbers, email, porno photos, letters to your mistress, etc.

Actually, I think wireless is safer than hard wired. A wired LAN can be tapped. There's no encryption so everything is available for capture. Wireless, properly setup, is encrypted. You can sniff, but all you get is garbage.

However, wireless has gotten a bad name because of crummy default security practices and defective encryption. If you're using WEP, it can be easily cracked and decoded. WEP is better than no encryption, but not good enough. The right answer is WPA encryption, which fixes the problems in WEP. WPA2 has an even better encryption protocol (AES instead of RC4).

If you're running WPA with a decent pass phrase, methinks you're quite safe.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

ZA is not a FW it doesn't separate two networks. ZA only protects the O/S, its services and Internet applications when the machine has a direct connection to the Internet.

You have a FW device in the 54G router that can stop inbound and outbound traffic.

You may want to use Wallwatcher to watch the inbound and outbound traffic to/from the router to possible dubious remote IP(s), which the 54G router can stop that traffic from a remote IP or from a LAN IP/machine behind the router that has been compromised by malware until such time that it can be located and removed.

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It may require that you use the firmware that allows Wallwatcher to work with the 54G.

Wireless can never be as safe as wire IMHO.

Duane :)

Reply to
Duane Arnold

Thanks for the response. The changes are what I have found at linksys site and others. Changing the SSID, disabling broadcast of the id, enabling MAC filtering etc. Generally, I have found they recommend 5 to 10 changes.

The router defaulted to WPA - PSK for Pre-Shared Key. While I see WPA2 in the list I am not sure if my computer works with that or not.

Considering the importance of security in a wireless network it is surprising how difficult it was to find out what to do and then when you do find it how poorly it is explained. For example everyone said change the SSID. What no one mentioned is that you are immediately kicked off your router since the ID is no longer the same nor how to go about getting back. Nor do they mention that when you do get in to check everything else. Since this also turned off the MAC filtering. I have probably missed something else but who knows.

It would be nice to get a detailed primer on this.

Thanks again.

Jim

Reply to
jcgc50

Everyone has their own formula for what's considered safe enough. To corporate America, nothing less than WPA2-AES-TKIP with an IPSec VPN running, is good enough. For most home users, WPA-PSK is good enough. There is some debate about the merits of MAC filtering and disabling SSID broadcasting.

XP does WPA2:

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Oh, it's not that difficult if you know the right buzzwords to feed into Google.

Chuckle. I do *ALL* my configuration using a wired connection. Yes, you'll get disconnected if you make changes while connected via wireless. Changing the SSID, MAC filtering, and encryption method will all pull the plug on you if you're trying to configure things via wireless. However, do it via wireless anyway. It's good practice to see how to disconnect, search for a new access point, and reconnect.

Ask and ye shall receive...

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A dozen more articles on wireless security.
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About half the above debunked:
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I agree with all his points.

Overwhelmed yet? Good. That's because I consider much of the above to be worthless. You can change the SSID, password, encryption, and such, and still have an insecure system. Devious and evil people (like me) always seem to find holes in the firewall, or sloppy implimentations. For example, give me 10 seconds with your laptop and my autorun USB dongle will copy your wireless settings, including your allegedly secret WPA pass phrase. Another 10 seconds and I can autorun a script to setup an admin account for me on your computah. (No, I won't publish my scripts and tools).

In my never humble opinion, the real basis of security is monitoring. It's like locking the door, but never checking to see if anyone is trying to pick the lock. Yeah, it's a bore looking at log files and intrusion reports, but that's about the only way to detect if I'm on your system. Do the basics as mentioned above. Never mind the creative nonsense such as SSID hiding, MAC filtering, disable DHCP, using NETBEUI, etc, and get some monitoring tools:

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Also, run some firewall security check tools:
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of other online security testers. However, be careful with their recommendations. Many of them are trying to sell you their security software, which may not be necessary or useful.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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