Wireless network attack?

[corkymills]

I have a laptop with a Belkin wireless router. Just watched "The Real Hustle" a programme where scams are exposed and according to it anyone sitting outside my house using certain software can see what I am looking at or even view stuff that would be trackable to my house. What measures can I take to protect myself??

Hope you can advise........All the best for 2007......

 

[Igorian]

Enable wireless encryption and use WPA with a key > 20 characters in length. Enable MAC filtering, turn of SSID broadcasts.

 

[nik161]

I saw that programme, what software do you think they use? and whats the likelyhood of that happening outside of your house?

I recently got an orange livebox, and set it up to run a wireless connection for my laptop, along with the 4 wired PC's in this house, however even though my key is the factory one whch is really long, and the security is set up right, I am still worried what people might 'see', by all means 'they' can pay my bills if they so wish, its all outgoing and nothing incoming!!!!

 

[Igorian]

I saw that programme, what software do you think they use? and whats the likelyhood of that happening outside of your house?

I recently got an orange livebox, and set it up to run a wireless connection for my laptop, along with the 4 wired PC's in this house, however even though my key is the factory one whch is really long, and the security is set up right, I am still worried what people might 'see', by all means 'they' can pay my bills if they so wish, its all outgoing and nothing incoming!!!!

Any laptop with wireless capability could be used to gain access to an unprotected network. No additional software is required.

There are tools, freely available on the Internet, which can scan and record the location of wireless networks and report on security levels. The idea is that you run the application on a laptop while driving around and it will record the GPS position of any wireless network it encounters. The hacker (war driver) can then analyse the logs and identify unprotected networks. It's then a simple case of returning to the location identified by the GPS and performing the hack.

One survey I carried out revealed 75 wireless networks during a 20 mile journey, 44 of which were unprotected and 8 of those were businesses.

 

[nik161]

amazing

you could sort of expect some home users to go unprotected whether out of lack of knowledge or other reasons, but businesses? now that really does surprise me.