Wireless networking Beware

Question

This e-mail is just to warn people of the vulnerability of wireless networks.  The company I work for has recently decided to turn of its wireless networking and disable all wireless cards in PCs and laptops.  The reason for this is that by the use of freely available software on the web we were able to hack into the wirless system.  It did take 1 hour to do this  We had WPA and WEP encryption, secure SSID etc!   We then tried on home wireless setups and the quickest we did the hack was 25 seconds!  Once in we could see all shared documents, use their web access to view any site we wanted.   Beware if we had been malicious we could have viewed illegal sites.  This would then leave the person whos has been hacked to explian to the authorities and try to prove to the authorities that they were not to blame.   We have been suprised by the number of wireless networks we could access and the range of the transmissions.   If you are not sure turn it off when not in use, reduce the power if possible or return to wired until wireless has been made secure!

bacillus · Answer

@dennislatimer306 wrote:  We had WPA and WEP encryption, secure SSID etc!   You surely can't have both WPA and WEP  running on the same network! How long was your WPA encryption key?

dennislatimer30 · Answer

We were not running both at the same time.  We tried both.  The Hacking software broke both types of encryption and all other security methods we used.   The WPA key was 32 digits

byker49 · Answer

These vulnerabities are all well documented on the web. See Steve Gibson's Security Now. There is no 'completely safe' anything. Security is not static and is more a state of mind. Is your house totally secure? You may have locked your door but what if the guy has a gun? A bomb?A flamethrower? With our homes,cars and networks and computers we do what we can then move on.

esquire · Answer

One thing is certain:  SSID was never meant to be secure.

sail2awe · Answer

the wireless signal can be stopped by making a regular screen barier, like for screen doors and windows, just fold it over several times, this will greatly decrease, even preventiing the wireless signal to exit in specific directions. just leave room for a signal to exit in the direction your pc is generally located inside the home, and safety is greatly increased.

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

Was this post helpful?