h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We have a wireless router that connects our computers, telly and phones to our broadband connection. We thought it was secure as there was a password to the LAN but Mrs swl has been complaining for a while that our bandwidth seems to be more limited than it used to be. After playing around with settings she discovered an unknown user on the network, "Zoom Zoom". So she changed the password but "Zoom Zoom" was back within the hour. Eventually we found a control panel that let us set a WPA encryption key and "Zoom Zoom" disappeared.

This morning I happened to overhear our neighbour complaining bitterly to his mate that he couldn't get on the internet last night! I took the opportunity to explain that it was our internet connection and I didn't appreciate him freeloading. Suffice to say he wasn't a happy chappy and he continued to boast to his mate that he could get round our security.

So, my question is - can he? Is encryption on the wireless secure or should I just hardwire everything?

Well, I hope it's secure. We do all our online banking that way.

What a cheeky neighbour!

Mol

Hubby regularly checks ours. We do know the family across the back from us have an unsecured wifi when their daughter comes home from uni.

The new neighbours have set up, but theirs is secure.

Just spoke to my in-house consultant.

He says if encrypted it should be safe from your neighbour, but may not be rigorous enough to withstand the efforts of a Bulgarian hacker in a van (this is a direct quote).

He also said that if you want to make it super-secure, you can give an address to each piece of hardware in your home and then set up the router so it will only allow access by those items. This is not without its problems (we had to abandon it because the router kept thinking it was also the printer, or something) but that might have been an issue with our equipment rather than with the theory.

Mol

The encryption provided by WPA is fairly primitive. I don't know how to get around it but my security friend says it is quite easy to get around.

The security used for online banking is a different thing altogether. That's SSL encryption, and there are only a few people on the planet that can break that (the CIA might be able to).

My best mate does this sort of work professionally so mine is pretty secure. He's done what Mol's consultant suggested and limited access to it based on device address as he had a problem when he lived in the house with others using his wi-fi and he's also very territorial. Can be a bit of a nuisance when friends want to come around and use their phones/laptops on my wi-fi.

At Uni a group of us locked someone else out of their own wifi: we watched as one-by-one the local unsecured networks got password protected so we took pre-emptive action against the last available network and locked them out before they could lock us out. Took them days before they finally worked out how to get rid of us/switch their router off: not one my proudest moments but kinda funny all the same

There are two major types of wireless encryption. WEP and WPA. WEP can be cracked in a few seconds with a tool freely downloadable from the internet - sounds like this is what Zoom Zoom has been using. WPA is more difficult to crack. If you have a bad password, and in some other unlikely circumstances, it can be cracked by a fairly sophisticated hacker (it involves downloading several gigabytes of data from the internet and having a high end computer to run computations). By the sounds of it, this isn't who you're dealing with. So, if you use WPA with a reasonably long password you should be fine.

Thanks, Dogster. I think when I said WPA was easy to crack earlier, I was confusing it with WEP. So disregard my former posting about WPA.

But what I said about the security of online banking is true.

It's a shame it comes to this but I recently "secured" our router. Personally, I didn't mind sharing with neighbors as I didn't suspect that any of them would snoop. However, we recently switched providers and I decided it would behoove us to go ahead and password protect it. I'm now more concerned with threats from governments and litigious corporations and groups like the RIAA. Since they're still trying to backdoor that damn ACTA treaty, the possibility of someone using our wifi to access copyrighted materials and the dire consequences that come with mere accusations of such has made me less altruistic.

I don't bother encrypting.

Set your encryption to WPA2 using TKIP/AES with a stupidly complicated password. Never, ever use the WEP key that comes with the router as they are easily hacked. You can also tell your router to hide your wireless network, so it effectively becomes invisible. If you want to add a device to your network just make it visible again; some routers have a button on the front that broadcasts the network for a minute or so, giving you enough time to set the new device up on the network.

This should solve the problem of your freeloading neighbour as he's probably using a phone app to get your details, but for ultimate protection you'd have to swap all your devices onto ethernet connections and turn your wireless network off completely.

Hope this helps!

What do people think of hotels that charge for wi-fi?

I don't think very much of them at all and never visit them twice. I'm even exasperated by places that make you go and ask them for a username and password.

You wouldn't believe how much cruise ships charge to access their wifi.

If they want my details I don't bother. Luckily O2 have a few hotspots via their The Cloud service so if I see one of them I just need to pop in my mobile number and I'm good to go

Thanks all

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A passing phase that will die out firstly when one chain offers it for free and secondly when 4G gets here.

If your neighbour really is boasting that he can get around your encryption, maybe you should pass his details onto the police, seeing as it's actually horribly illegal.
Leaching off you is one thing, but determinedly doing it again after being caught is rather beyond the pale for me.

I must look into how to change my password one of these days. I confess I have no idea and do just use the password that came with the router.
We are kind of in the back of beyond at our house though - only one neigbour stands a chance of hacking in and I suspect the foxes, badgers and rabbits that live in the forest at the back won't care too much about it.

The default password is often mathematically related to the default account name, so it's fairly easy for other people to get into your account if you do that.

If you have an open, insecure wireless connection (a) people can steal your bandwidth, and (b) people can steal data you send over HTTP or other insecure protocols. But when you log into your bank website on a HTTPS connection, that is secure from your computer to their server. It doesn't matter that the data is passing over an insecure connection, because the data itself is encrypted.

Well, theoretically someone could do a "man in the middle" attack on you, but that is horribly sophisticated and if someone's doing that an insecure wireless connection is the least of your troubles.

I have a dongle that plugs straight into my computer for my internet connection. Not ideal, but it serves for now.

TRiG.

For more security, you can download this plug-in for chrome and firefox that will direct you to secure versions of websites when they're available.

http://www.eff.org/https-everywhere (without the S so that it will link from here.)
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Here's another reason to secure your wifi, Google.

http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/google-spy-case-shows-why-you-need-encrypt-your-wi-744411

What fords said.

Not only use WPA2 but you should certainly find the setting on your router (or wireless access point, if it's separate) that turns off the broadcast of your SSID. That way, your "friendly" neighborhood WiFi thief doesn't see your network when he's surfing for a free ride. You should change the name of your network, though, since you've had this guy on your WiFi.

If you want to add a device, even though the broadcast is turned off, you can use the manual method by entering the SSID into your device.

For added security, also set your network up to only allow the specified MAC addresses to use it - but then you will need to add any friends to the table when they wander into your house & say "hey, how come your WiFi doesn't work" (assuming you want them on the LAN )