Wireless Network Security for the Stupid

July 27 2008 09:06 Filed in: Poop
I’m amazed I’m even posting this, but I’m mighty thankful to Huey right now. Here’s a piece of advice that 95% of you must already know. Shouldn’t you?

First, let me say that I love the world of wireless networking. Potentially having internet access anywhere and everywhere is one of the things that gives me serenity in life. The implications culturally of the internet are much more vast than most people realize. Wirless networking is just part of the massive concussion blast from the internet explosion.

Here I am in South Carolina, 800 miles or so from home and one of my slight concerns on the trip was making sure I had some connectivity. Sure I could pay an outrageous amount for a wireless card and monthly service to get speeds much more akin to dial-up than broadband, but I don’t need that enough to warrant it.

So here I am scouting out Starbucks and other businesses that whore out their wireless connections to anyone that will buy a $5.00 cup of coffee or a sandwich. When we hit the beach house last night the routine survey with the handy little wireless network detector my compadre BD gave me showed that if I stood in one small corner of the house I could get one dot. Of course, as my wife pointed out, that didn’t mean that I was going to be able to connect to a secured network. As naive and ignorant of certain aspects of technology my wife is (mainly because she isn’t the internet/gadget/tech junkie I am) even she knows that if you have a wireless network at home you don’t just leave it out there swinging in the breeze for everyone to grab.

Well, BD is going to be a getting a strongly worded letter from me demanding an explanation of why his wireless network detector is sub-par--my new friend Huey is offering free interent service to all the homes on this block. It’s pretty solid. He’s giving about 6 meg down speeds right now, though his upload speeds are little on the lean side at around half a meg. I’ve never met Huey. I hope I never do, to be Honest, but his ISP is the bomb.

Huey is offering me free internet service because apparently he doesn’t understand or feel the need to utilize wireless encryption protocol or any other form of network security. To the lay person it may sound intimidating. WIRELESS ENCRYTPION PROTOCOL! Holy Jesus, how do I set something like that up? It’s easy. You set a password.

Yes, there are those technology oriented people that are going to try to intimidate you by referring to it as a “key.” Pay no mind. A password is a password. In fact, when you set up your wireless network using the setup package it most likely warned you repeatedly to do so In some cases it probably set it up for you telling you that you would have to undo it if you didn’t want a password for your network. Of course, you just might have more tech saavy than common sense and realize that you didn’t have to run the setup package at all and simply by-passed all this.

That’s awesome, glad you realized that every piece of technology you buy does NOT necessitate installing another application on your computer. In fact, I try to avoid every piece of needless software I can. However, if you are going to by-pass this piece of wireless network set up you need to know how to get to your router admin and set it up properly.

Huey did not set up any network security. Now, I’ve had brief conversations with some fairly intelligent people from time to time about this. Why don’t you have a WEP key set up? The answer is always something akin to that it’s just bandwidth and how much bandwidth could your neighbor take--all minimalist views of the potential negative outcome. Besides, it’s such a hassle to set the key up and have to give it to every visitor with a laptop. Okay, here’s my official reasoning.
  • Bandwidth Suck. It’s easy to say that your neighbor checking email and surfing porn is not going to have any impact on you, but what if you live next to to a Bit Torrent Whore? Lots of broadband providors use the insanely crippling practice of bandwidth throttling when it sees that you’re opening up ports for Bit Torrent programs and starting the process. This throttling will effectively take all other activities down to a crawl. Internet surfing becomes nearly impossible. You’re back on AOL in 1991 or most likely worse.
  • Legal Hassles. Despite ISPs doing everything they can to keep their customers IPs private, there is a reasonable amount of risk. When a 12 year old girl gets sued by the RIAA for downloading music you can see the concern. If you engage in other traffic of copyrighted material you assume the risk for yourself. Are you prepared to assume the risk for someone else? Ultimately, you might not get the full brunt of this if you can prove that you’re stupid enough to leave your network unsecured, but it’s still just an unwise course of action.
  • Wireless router limitations. I still don’t understand how a wireless router can say on the box that is has unlimited ports to allow internet access yet limit how many IP addresses it will give out. Usually, 3-5 computers is all that sucker is going to support at one time. In the PC and laptop junkyard that I live in, even with two seperate wireless networks and routers in my house, I run into this all the time. Sometimes you’re knocked off the network completely or just get the foreboding message that an “IP Address conflict has been detected”. I’ve done the math in my head and been flabbergasted by this. How can I possibly have that many computers on this network right now? Ahhhh...forgot, the Nintendo Wii is a device on the network. That’s right, my Blackberry 8820 with Wi-Fi automatically registers to my home network...shit, for all I know my youngest son has a chip in his head that has to pull an IP address for him to remember to pull his pants down before taking a piss.
  • Personal File Security. Okay, if you’re trusting enough to not password your network, chances are you you aren’t passwording your shared files as well. If you allow me on your network, you have allowed me access to open files, too. This is a very generous thing to do with your neighbors. Now I can see everything from your financial information to letters written to your Aunt Bertha. I’ve got all your family photos as well as the child pornography you’ve been downloading.

The most basic network security will prevent 99% of intrusions. Set a damn password. On second thought, thank you Huey for not setting a password. Maybe I’ll pound out some torrents this week while Huey is on hold with his cable providor’s tech support trying to figure out why he can’t load a web page.

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