RE: home wireless router good practices for security

[Jacob McMaster <jmcmaster () appliedsystems com>]

 1)  not much

 2) You can always change it back to any when you leave, or XP has a feature
where it autodects

3)      VPN, also take their advise and use ma filtering, it helps, if you
can do with out DHCP leave that off, as i know a lot of "kiddies" can't seem
to read packets and get your network information, also you could change your
ip scheme from the non standard 192.168.x.x so they can't guess your network
info either




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve [mailto:securityfocus () delahunty com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 1:33 PM
> To: security-basics () securityfocus com
> Subject: home wireless router good practices for security
>
> So I went out and purchased a wireless router (Linksys 802.11b) for home
> since it was so inexpensive and actually less cost than the wireless
> access points I was trying to get via eBay.  Got it home, installed my
> wireless network card (SMC), powered on the router, attached it to a
> port on my other wired linksys router, and boom it worked great.  Then
> about 5 minutes after I sent an instant message to my neighbor (fellow
> IT friend) he was on my network.  So I took the steps that Linksys
> recommends below, seems good (to me).
>     Change the default SSID
>     Disable SSID Broadcasts
>     Change the default password for the Administrator account
>     Enable WEP 128-bit Encryption
> Linksys also recommends these other measures, I have not implemented:
>     Enable MAC Address Filtering
>     Change the SSID periodically
>     Change the WEP encryption keys periodically.
>
> My Questions:
>
> 1) Anyone know how much enabling 128-bit encryption will hurt my
> wireless performance?
>
> 2) Does setting the SSID for my wireless NIC then keep me from getting
> onto other wireless networks like when traveling?  I ask since that
> setting was set to ANY before I changed it to the SSID that I set for my
> wireless router.
>
> 3) What else should I really do to protect my home network?
>
>
>
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