Wireless security question

[kmillerusaf]

Good morning all,

Funny thing happened to a friend of mine's father. Apparently he was connecting to the internet through a lan but had his wireless on at the same time. Someone managed to still all of his account information and he had to have everything cancelled, etc. My friend says his father knows a good deal about computers and had it firewalled up but he blamed his wireless for allowing the unauthorized access. That kind of made me worried. All I am using right now is Windows XP firewall for security on my wireless and I have not changed any of the advanced settings on it. Am I safe or unsecure? I would love to know that answer and if possible, how to fix it. Take it easy everyone.

Keith

[Floppyman]

Even though your computer may have a firewall enabled, people might still be able to connect to your connection/LAN if you have a wireless router/AP and the wireless traffic is not encrypted and/or filtered.

What router do you have? Here are some things you can do to make more secure:

1. Enable encryption on the traffic: (either WEP or WPA/WPA2).
2. Filter your traffic (that means enabling MAC address filtering so only certain specificied computers can connect to your connection). This by itself is not very secure since MAC addresses can easily be spoofed.
3. Disable SSID broadcasting. Basically tells the router not broadcast its presence out for everyone to see that may be within wireless signal range.

If you do all three of these things, you'll be well on the way to having a more secure wireless connection.

HTH

[kmillerusaf]

That's the thing... I am connecting to a free wireless network on my air force base inside a 'hotel' so I am not so sure how safe I am. So I am not in control of the router, just the machine connecting to it. What do you think I should do?

[Floppyman]

I'm curious now, is this free wireless network from the Air Force or is this just something somenone else setup? If that's the case, then running a quality firewall might be all you can do. I'd run ZoneAlarm on top of the windows firewall, because it will prompt you if a program or service needs to use the network for outgoing traffic -- the windows firewall does not do that. Other than that, keep an eye on your connection, and shut off your wireless when you are not using it -- mainly common sense things. Oh and of course, always make sure your computer is up to date with the latest windows patches. HTH

[kmillerusaf]

I am not sure if it is an actual "air force" run network, but the hotel has something set up with an ISP down here to provide free wireless in one particular place in the building... Luckily when I go upstairs to my room, I can't connect to the network even though my system continues to search for one. I was hoping to stay away from zone alarm but you are right, windows firewall doesnt detect outgoing connections. I do keep XP updated as well as a/v and spyware detection and check regularly. Thanks for all your help