Google is God
Well well, it looks like my DSL was out again, and it has been like that since Friday. Called streamyx again to try to resolve the issue but no luck, so finally they’ll be sending over a technician to check out the damn line. I also attempted to call up their billing line in order to get a rebate/discount for my lack of service. But the call was quite a frustration, the person couldn’t understand exactly what I wanted, and directed me to post the complain online. Wait a second, I can’t get online! So I kept talking and talking in frustration. Going to call tomorrow and try to get a better answer.
I admit it, I am an Internet addict. I bet you alot of the people who read this are internet addicts. But even though we are, we all know that the internet is shit , yet we can’t get away from it. So how do I get online? Well I’ll leave that up to you to figure out.
This brings out another important issue. Lately I have been reading of people leaving their laptops on and driving from home to work, and detecting all the available wireless networks, and to my surprise there are alot that are open.
What is there to be worried about from viruses, trojans, and worms, when people can easily access your home wireless network, and do whatever they wish. Physical access to your network now isn’t a problem at all.
Also I have been glancing through the Insecure Magazine Issue 1, where they have an article on how to secure your wireless network. By the way this magazine is really recent, April 2005.
There is a checklist for you to tick off:
Change the default SSID
Disable SSID Broadcast
Turn on WEP Encryption
Research upgrading to WPA/TKIP Encryption
Filter MAC address
Change all default user name and passwords
Change default IP subnet ( 192.168.0.1 )
Disable DHCP
Implement firewall
First of all, I am no security expert, but I can tell you a few things. Doing the above will really stop the “passer by” people who don’t really care/understand.
My first nitty gritty is their suggestion to use WEP Encryption, and to research upgrading to WPA / TKIP. First of all, we all know that WEP Encryption sucks, and for a security magazine I can’t believe they even suggest that. Also I don’t exactly know the trouble of moving to WPA, I have had no difficulties, and required no research at all. I just selected from the drop down menu “WPA” and presto. I’ve done it on other machines as well. Hell I even got WPA working on my Linux machine, which is supposed to be trivial.
Disabling DHCP will make it a hassle for instant on connectivity ( with password of course ). Why should a person expect to set up his own IP address?
By using kismet I can eliminate the need/requirement for the others. With kismet I can see who is connected to each wireless access point, and get their mac addresses. This eliminates mac filtering as I can easily change my mac address with “ifconfig eth1 hw ether 00:00:00:00:00:00″ and edit as needed. Of course you may run into a few problems, but so far I don’t seem to be having any.
Kismet also picks up any ap which have disable ssid broadcasting, which makes it pointless. If you do disable SSID, I think you make it a hassle for other people (newbies) trying to find your network, just to surf the net. Trusted people of course.
So basically my only line of defense is WPA/TKIP. Does that make me unsafe? Personally, I don’t really know, and in fact am thinking of moving to WPAv2 .
Of course make sure your password for your wireless access point cannot be dictionary cracked.
On another note, my multimedia lecturer seems so excited about the prospects of software patents, and I have a project for the course. So I am going to do a flash presentation on…”Software Patents”, didn’t exactly say what, but I hope to teach him, and the class a thing or two. Sweet revenge.
