Securing your wireless net work part one

“According to a 2005 article, in the online magazine the Register†, research was done in mainland Europe and the US. In all cities surveyed, more than a third of businesses wireless networks were found to be insecure – 36 per cent of businesses in London, 34 per cent in Frankfurt, 38 per cent in New York and 35 per cent in San Francisco”.

With no cables to run around the office wireless networks (Wi-Fi) are easy to install, and because of this convenience many small businesses are adopting Wi-Fi at a rapid pace.

Wi-Fi works by sending information over radio waves, and since there is no real practical way to stop this radio signal at your door they can be intercepted and your data can be eavesdropped on. To illustrate this I took a stroll to the corner behind my office, and was able to find eight unprotected Wi-Fi networks on my PDA, while I did not connect to any of them, it would have been easy for an unscrupulous person to connect to the unprotected Wi-Fi networks.

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While researching this article I found a tutorial that shows you how to set up 2 wireless routers to amplify your neighbors unprotected wireless network, this of cause can be applied to any unprotected Wi-Fi access point, another webpage I came a cross contains the default passwords for hundreds of Wi-Fi routers, this would allow a person to log onto your routers setup panel and take over the unprotected router.

Besides having an intruder muddling through your network, your ISP might cut you off for excessive bandwidth usage or for downloading illicit/illegal files. While you may not be on the hook legally†† for the activity on your internet connection, why would you take the chance that you loose your internet service or that you get entangled in a frivolous lawsuit with the Recording Industry Association of America.

 

†http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/11/Wi-Fi_security_survey
†† According to Techdirt the Corporate Intelligence Company, “If you are legally sharing your Wi-Fi, then you are a service provider, and under current laws you are not liable for what others do with the service. That’s what it says in the Communications Decency Act, and it clearly applies here.”  http://techdirt.com/articles/20060320/1636238.shtml

See Part Two for the steps to take to secure your wireless network, coming next week