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mr_bigman
Supporter
Joined: 25 Mar 2008
Posts: 58
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 Posted: 05/12/08 - 20:42 Post subject: How safe is your connection?
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Okay, so im guessing most people have wireless internet. Yes?
How safe do you think you are, on a scale of 1 to 10? For most people having a WPA set up to stop those freeloaders from using up your bandwidth is enough for you to sleep well at night, but did you know how easy it is to walk along the street and jump onto their broadband?
Im only bringing this up because I was walking home one night with a laptop and decided to open it just to see what was in the air. I managed to find 20 networks within 50 metres of walking, 12 of which didn't even have a network key. Most even have the default settings for accessing the router controls (username:admin password:admin), so joe average could just walk in, change their router settings and walk off rendering their broadband useless.
So you're probably thinking, this is all ok, i don't care who comes and uses my wireless, its not doing anything to me. Wrong. People trawl suburbs looking for wireless points and just nicking you're credit card details, username and passwords, data and the rest. Even thought I doubt some guy in a white van is going to steal your WoW acount, its possible, along with a host of other possibilities (all of which are bad).
Heres a screenie of what I got up to just sitting outside someones house for about 20 seconds:
Thats some guys router settings im playing with.
Do some homework on it and make sure you secure your network.
Alternativley...
This + This = Fun 
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r1ky
Super Moderator
Joined: 18 Jul 2007
Posts: 2497
Location: <--
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Posted: 05/13/08 - 08:54 Post subject:
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I use WPA, and its secured, no admin-admin logins here.
Some people have a unsecure internet connection at my neighbourhood, anyone could easily steal their data. No wonder there are so many stolen credit cards.
People are just dumb enough to think they won't get robbed whilst they are sitting at a comp with open access internet.
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rrich
Supporter
Joined: 02 Oct 2008
Posts: 152
Location: London, Canada
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Posted: 10/02/08 - 19:48 Post subject:
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I was doing a city inventory which required me walking around all the neighbourhoods in a major city with a tablet pc (blech).....
SOOO MANY UNSECURE NETWORKS!! every block I was on had atleast one connection I could hijack with default router login.
WEP is a joke now and can be brute force hacked in a few minutes with easy to find free programs.
WPA is decent. WPA2 is better. I've been safe using WPA so far (I have wireless devices that don't suppord WPA2) and passwording the router with a custom username / pass. I set up a Wireless Distribution System betweem 2 companies and used WPA2 and we never ran into security issues. Thankfully the changing encryption algorithm makes for nice secure data.
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Madmonky
Total Newbie
Joined: 03 Oct 2008
Posts: 10
Location: Tampa Florida
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Posted: 10/03/08 - 18:24 Post subject:
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After i got my 1st wireless router a creepy neighbor guy knocked on my door announced he has been using my wireless intenet connection and asked me to leave it plugged in 24hrs a day, i had a habit of unplugging it when i wasnt using it.
That sounded too much like he was asking my permission to s***w me so i made the biggest sn and pw i could and left it unplugged til he moved away..
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rrich
Supporter
Joined: 02 Oct 2008
Posts: 152
Location: London, Canada
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Posted: 10/03/08 - 18:31 Post subject:
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hahaha, that is great. I noticed my neighbour was sucking off of our net connection when a computer with a MAC address that we didn't own was causing our net to get congested. Banned the MAC address and all was good. Sadly one of the family members used our passkey on their computer and they exploited that fact.
On the plus side.... showed the range capabilities of an unlocked WRT45g as they lived across the street and had good to excellent connection strength.
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