Spine-Chilling Wireless Security

Welcome to another spine chilling adventure in the world of computers. As we zoom out the window, we see a shadow of a person, he’s using a laptop, and it appears he’s getting his email. You start to wonder, why is this person sitting in his car and how is he connected to the Internet?

The answer is simple: he is using your web connection and your router because you did one (or all) of the following:

1. You used no encryption
2. You used WEP 64 encryption
3. You have a line running out the door and are a very giving person

OK, so 1 and 2 are more likely, and 3 is just me being silly. But if you are doing 1 or 2, it is just the same thing as 3. Wait, I thought Wired Equivalent Privacy would prevent me from getting hacked into? Wrong!

With today’s laptops using processors of 2+ GHZ and multiple cores, us hackers (I’m a white hat hacker, a good guy) can get into a WEP system within minutes. (Gulp.) Now, what is the difference in the encryption types?

WEP has two flavors, 64 and 128, but uses a key length of 10 and 26 characters. So with that I can do a brute force on 10 (64–bit) within a few minutes by rolling a combo of letters and numbers. With 128-bit it will take much longer. (Much.)

WPA/WPA2 is the newer version and 10 times more safe than WEP protection. I won’t bore you with how to do the cracking, but let me say this—it's way easy!

Note: when making a passkey, please use a combo of letters, numbers and symbols like maybe this:

~`s^j)0kq_2@aBaz^  

This is way harder to break. Your phone number? Easy.

OK, so get moving on safeguarding your network. Get to WEP 128–bit and/or WPA styles of encryption. Get to a solution fast, because who knows, the kid next door could be using your network for free, or the guy may drive up and take all your personal information. With a little effort you can lock it all down, so take the time!