Secuing Your WLAN
Although recent articles running in The New York Times have declared that it is dangerous to leave Access Points (APs) unprotected, many residential customers we have spoken with still see no value in securing their Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN).
Access Points that are set up without security are a means for the hacker to grab sensitive information out of the air. They can do that using specialized wireless packet sniffers and other hi-tech gadgets.
Although rogue APs are targets for hackers what many fail to realize is that a wireless laptop can also be a target. Mechanisms exist to turn a wireless laptop into an Access Point; this is not only an ad hoc mode problem. As the laptop with its default installation sends out probes for access points, the hacker's laptop responds, pretending to be the cool wi-fi spot in the coffee shop. Once connected, the victim's computer is on the hacker's LAN and the hacker can proceed to hack the computer via shares, or perhaps by sending orders to an embedded bot.
There exist directions all over the Internet for hacking WEP encryption. WPA (wi-fi protected access) is a much safer standard and if you read the specification you will know why. Keys are automatically generated and constantly change (rekeyed), not giving the hacker much hope. The rekeying occurs very quickly, making it a very robust security mechanism. We have seen, however, that in the field, not all devices support WPA. Notably we have had a problem getting an HP printer to agree to the protocol after hours of effort. Unfortunately then, the entire LAN had to be stepped down to WEP 128-bit encryption. So the hard fact is that some devices are still not (as of this writing) able to talk WPA.
MAC filtering is another tool in the arsenal to secure a wireless access point. Through this filtering, the access point can be told to only accept probes from computers with specific hardware addresses. We support this technique, but one problem we may face in the field is customers calling back as new devices are added to their network and are shut out because of security. This is an example of inconvenience following security.
Many papers suggest the idea of not broadcasting an SSID. This is a recommended best practice, but the residential user will need some saavy to document and keep safe the SSID. They will also connect to the AP a bit differently. Well worth the effort we say.
We have all heard of wardrivers. These are the guys who drive around with special equipment looking for wireless networks to crack. One thing they are trying to get is passwords which are sent 'in the clear'. Orange Crystal Consulting has experience with network sniffers (thanks MCI) and we know just how easy this is. There have been incidents of such hackers committing extortion on their victims after retrieving sensitive information from the airwaves.
There are tools such as NetStumbler (www.netstumbler.com) which allow such wardrivers to use their laptops and gain illegal access to unprotected WLANs. Automatic WEP key rotation if available would probably be another good defense to deploy.
Authentication and VPN are the most powerful security protocols which provide the ultimate in wireless security. We suggest that the interested reader explore these subjects further. They are not without expense, and it is unclear whether or not the residential market would bear this expense.
Security incidents can be costly, so it is our posture to do the best we can to insure your wireless network is not hacked. The retort that "nobody is interested in my network" really doesn't make sense. Hacking tools are not smart enough to ignore your network.
In summary, we hope our home users will opt for our wireless security services, and hopefully we can help establish WPA as the new baseline standard.