Securing a Wireless router?

[joshwa]

mgh0 - can you still get access through the web interface with a pc that's plugged in with a wire?

[megah0]

thats how i am posting here

Router is totally frozen

[nichomach]

netgear DG834G

OK, that's your router; I don't know what the WLAN card is, but here goes:

1. Do you know your SSID? This is case sensitive. If so, good; if not then we're knackered .
2. Are you on XP SP2? If so, then you need to set up an appropriate profile for your WLAN associated with your wireless adapter. Go to Start, Programs, Accessories, Communications, Network Connections and look for the Wireless Network Connection. Right-click and choose "Properties". Go to Wireless Networks. Here, you'll need to add a profile. If there is already a profile, bin it. Give the new profile the SSID - remember, case sensitive - and also choose the encryption method. Add the encryption key. OK it and it should work.

When you disable SSID broadcast, you need to tell the machine there's a WLAN there and what encryption to use; it won't autodetect anymore (which is kind of the point).

[nichomach]

thats how i am posting here
Router is totally frozen

I take it that you're plugged into the router via a wire, in which case it isn't frozen, it's just that you need to tell your laptop how to connect to it, as above. If you want to undo the change then go in via a wired connection and re-enable SSID broadcast.

[megah0]

that was all done anyway.

Wlan cards are netgear W311, Dlink usb, and and ebuyer pcmcia.

that profile is already setup.

Router is still knackered, this is soo depressing as it was finally working properly this afternoon

[nichomach]

Look, if you want to undo the change, plug in a wired network connection, go in via the web interface and untick the box. You may need to do a right-click "repair" on the wired connection (Start, Programs, Accessories, Communications, Network Connections, right-click on Local Area Connection) if it's been unplugged, since you'll need to get it to pick up an IP address from the router. Bear in mind that I said you'd have to delete the existing WLAN profile from the WLAN cards and set the profile manually.

[megah0]

I am ON a wired connection, router refuses to respond to any change

[joshwa]

have you tried pulling the power cable out?

ps - sorry that my thread's caused all this hassle

[megah0]

did a complete hard reset of the router which brought it back to life.

think i can live with people being able to see my connection

[nichomach]

OK, fair enough; if disabling SSID broadcast keeled your router over, then I suspect a wonky router, I'm afraid.

[Kumagoro]

I think that if someone knows how 'in theory' to crack a wireless network. They will check whats in there area. I do. I never said having it on the least used channel was to do with security.

on my own network i have disabled ssid and have seen it drop in link quality straight away. With it sometimes dropping connection and having to re establish itself. Im not saying if you dont broadcast ssid your connection will sometimes drop but be aware that it can have that affect for what ever reason. hiding ssid gets you no worthwhile benefits.

[Barry]

To secure best way is using 128 bit WEP key, most routers have a wireless access list (abit like mac filtering)

is it not recommended that you should be 20 foot away from for best results?

[bsodmike]

I thought that WPA was much more secure then WEP? If they can crack the WEP then they should be able to spoof their Mac addresses...I'm quite sure that WPA can't be cracked easily tho - pls correct me if I am wrong.

[Paul Adams]

I thought that WPA was much more secure then WEP? If they can crack the WEP then they should be able to spoof their Mac addresses...I'm quite sure that WPA can't be cracked easily tho - pls correct me if I am wrong.

WEP uses a static encryption key, WPA uses dynamic encryption keys.

If we emailed each other every hour for a week and transferred password-protected files using the same password, this is similar to using WEP - brute-force the password and all the files are compromised.

If we change the password every hour then every individual file would need to be brute-forced from scratch, this is akin to WPA.


Very basic, crude analogy but it gets the idea across I think.

(Ironically, the "PSK" part of "WPA-PSK" is "Pre-Shared Key" - this is a static key used just once at the session creation stage to start the dynamic key exchange.)