So You Think Your Wi-Fi Network is Secure?

Wi-Fi networks deliver tremendous benefits. They provide the ability to connect to the Internet almost anywhere at anytime. You can connect in your home, office, or the coffee shop without being tethered to a wall jack, and Wi-Fi is built into most laptop PC's.

Wi-Fi is also easy to set up if you don't think about security. Out of the box, you can quickly turn on your wireless network, and connect your without much effort. Without security however, everyone else can connect to your network with the same ease. If you don't take the steps to secure your wireless network everything you do over the wireless network can also be seen by hackers up to a mile away.

Who Needs Wireless Security?

One of the common reasons why users don't secure their Wi-Fi networks is that no one wants access to their network or that there is no important information on the network to worry about. Hacking is less about joy-riding on someone else's network and more about the financial payoff that can be gained by stealing confidential or personal information over the network. In fact, over half of cyber crimes are now committed over Wi-Fi networks, because they provide anonymity that wired networks don't provide.

With a poorly secured Wi-Fi network, a wireless hacker can read your email, see the websites you visit, and even access files on your system that aren't properly secured. Your e-mail username and password are easily picked off an unsecured Wi-Fi network when every time your email is updated. Once your e-mail account is compromised, it becomes very easy to gain personal identity.

Another common misconception is that Wi-Fi can only be accessed from 300 feet away. With a $50 antenna, a hacker can access your Wi-Fi network from a mile away, out of sight and undetectable.

War drivers looking for unsecured networks, locate and record Wi-Fi networks. They then share those locations on websites such as www.wigle.net for other war drivers and hackers to find and user those networks.

Why Are So Many Networks Unsecured?

While setting up a Wi-Fi network is easy, turning on security takes some technical expertise and the ability to understand terms like WEP, WPA, 802.1x, and EAP. While wireless equipment manufacturers provide access to these security parameters, very few of them make it easy to understand, or easy to set-up.

Wi-Fi Security for Dummies

There are 4 basic levels of Wi-Fi security: "Open" (unsecured), WEP, WPA-PSK, and 802.1X. Let’s walk through these techno-acronyms and explain these basic levels of security in less technical terms.

• "Open" is just that, open to all comers without any basic level of security. Like leaving your front door unlocked for anyone to enter, open networks are just a bad idea.

• WEP is the lowest level of security available on most Wi-Fi networks. Unfortunately, WEP have fundamental flaws that make it easy to hack and software on the Internet can crack WEP security in 10 minutes. WEP is equivalent to locking your screen door; it may keep your neighbor out, but it takes little effort to break in.

• WPA is the successor to WEP that is more difficult to crack. WPA is comparable to having a single lock on your front door, and giving a key to everyone you want to give access to. Keys can be shared or walked away with when someone leaves the network. The challenge with WPA is removing someone requires the entire network to be re-keyed and new keys re-distributed to valid users.

• "802.1X" is called enterprise-level security because it provides the highest level of Wi-Fi security available. 802.1X is widely deployed by Fortune 500 companies and eliminates the common key problem by providing a unique key for each valid user every time they enter the network. This is analogous to the room key used in hotels. Each authorized user gets a new unique key every time they enter the network valid only for the time they are on the network.

802.1x typically requires a RADIUS server, which takes training and some technical work to deploy and maintain. This put the highest level of Wi-Fi security out of reach for most small and mid-sized businesses because of implementation costs.

Products like WiTopia's SecureMyWiFi Business Edition addresses the need for small and mid-sized businesses to quickly and easily deploy strong Wi-Fi security. It can deliver 802.1x enterprise level security for small and midsize business that can be set up in less than 15 minutes without any wireless or security expertise.

It's important that wireless network users understand the dangers of unsecured networks, and properly secure their networks. Open (unsecured) and WEP are poor approaches to Wi-Fi security. WPA, while complex, offers a base level of security, and 802.1x offers the best security available. Businesses are best advised to use 802.1x through either RADIUS server or the more simplified approach that WiTopia offers.

How Secure is Your Wi-Fi Network Against War Drivers & Casual Network Intruders?

Did you know that your wireless Wi-Fi network can be accessed by hacker from over a mile away? With a laptop PC, Wi-Fi hackerware off the internet, and a $30 antenna, hackers can access your Wi-Fi network from much further away than your standard laptop can reach. If your network is unsecured or open, they have the capability to monitor every piece of information that is sent over the network, access your PCs, and if you're connected to a VPN, tunnel through to a corporate network.

War driving, the art of finding Wi-Fi networks, is becoming a popular game for many hackers. Armed with a PC, antenna, and GPS, hackers drive around their communities to locate wireless Wi-Fi networks, and can post them on popular war driving websites for all to access over the internet.

And finding unsecured networks is like shooting fish in a barrel:

Shipley, a computer security researcher and consultant, is demonstrating war driving. It doesn't take long to produce results. The moment he pulls out of the parking garage, the laptop displays the name of a wireless network operating within one of the anonymous downtown office buildings: "SOMA AirNet." Shipley's custom software passively logs the latitude and longitude, the signal strength, the network name and other vital stats After an hour, Shipley's black Saturn has crawled through rush hour traffic, and his jury-rigged wireless hacking setup has discovered eighty networks beaconing their location to the world.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8835

Walking down Yonge Street and Bay Street (heart of the Financial District in Toronto) one finds countless warchalking markings (warchalking refers to the "chalk marks" that people leave to indicate the proximity of open wireless networks). War driving, the act of looking for and using open, unsecure wireless networks is increasing with little-to-no legal action being taken. Until laws are set to deal with this, companies will need to deal with issues themselves.

http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/security/features/article.php/3325971

Once wireless networks are identified by war drivers, they can be posted on numerous popular war driving websites. Many people are surprised to find out how easy it is to find their network up on a web site. To see if your network has been posted yet, try one of the more popular web sites:

http://www.wigle.net/gps/gps/GPSDB/onlinemap/

Type in your address & see what pops up.

When I put in my home address, my secure network wasn't found, but my neighbor's open Wi-Fi network was listed (unfortunately, his SSID was his last name) from the freeway which is over 1/2 mile from our house. His banking information and personal records were stored on his PCs on the network, and his POP3 e-mail account readily broadcast his username & password every time he received e-mail.

He has since secured his Wi-Fi network, but like many wireless users, he was under the misconception that because he couldn't get Wi-Fi access in his basement, hackers couldn't find his network. Not only did they find his network, they posted it on a web site along with the fact that it was not secured, the channel number, MAC ID, and the last time someone verified that it was still be open. Don't be a victim of hackers that want access to your personal & business information.

Best Practices to Secure Your Wireless Network

The good news is that simple tools are available to properly secure your wireless network and avoid the dangers discussed above.

The Wi-Fi Alliance designated WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) as the recommended security practices for consumer & business networks. WPA comes in two forms: WPA-PSK which offers a lower-level security for consumers, and WPA-Enterprise which offers a higher level of security for enterprises. Solutions like Witopia and WiFi Login Pro deliver enterprise level security with the consumer-level simplicity that can be easily and quickly deployed in home offices, small offices, and medium businesses. WPA-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) - WPA-PSK provides a relatively secure solution for consumer networks. If you’re technically competent, and feel comfortable configuring the security parameters of your wireless access point or router, you can configure your wireless network to support WPA-PSK. By entering a common 64 digit hexadecimal key or an ASCII pass phrase into every device on the network you can properly encrypt all network traffic to and from the access point. The LucidLink WiFi Client can automatically detect if a network requires WPA-PSK and simplifies the client configuration.

WPA-PSK has fixed many of the problems associated with pre-shared keys used in WEP. While it is quite awkward to properly enter a 64 digit hexadecimal key into each device on the network, if done carefully, it can provide strong encryption of network traffic and ward off hackers. A random ASCII passphrase (random to avoid a dictionary attack) can be used to avoid the hexadecimal key entry.

One of the common complaints with WPA-PSK, however, is that it uses a common key across all of the devices and PCs on the network. If you, an employee, or your child innocently shares this key with anyone, the integrity of the network can be compromised. If any person leaves an organization or needs to be denied access to the network, every PC on the network needs to be reprogrammed with a new 64 digit pre-shared key. The need to re-key every device on the network if a single user is removed can become a heavy burden to maintaining a small business network.

WPA-Enterprise uses the same type of network security used by enterprises and ISP over the last decade to protect access to wired networks. Unlike WPA-PSK, each user accessing the network is given unique credentials. These credentials may be in the form of passwords or electronic certificates.

For a user to access the network, they provide the unique credentials which are verified by a designated PC providing access management using a security protocol called 802.1X. When the server acknowledges the user as having valid credentials, the user is given access to the network and given a new encryption key every time they enter the network. The encryption key is used to encrypt & secure the network traffic between the user's PC and the network access point. Without proper credentials, the user is denied access.

One of the benefits of WPA-Enterprise is that it offers a much higher level of manageability. User access can be controlled on a user-by-user basis. A user can be removed from the network without re-keying every device on the network.

Is Your Wi-Fi Network Listed on the Internet?

Interested statistics from www.wigle.net where Wi-Fi hackers and and war drivers that capture Wi-Fi network information and post to the internet:

Total number of networks found: over 11,280,000

Percent of networks protected with WEP: 44.0%

Percent of networks not protected (without WEP): 40.5%

Percent of networks unknown: 15.4%

Pretty scary thought - somewhere between 40% and 56% of all Wi-Fi networks have no Wi-Fi security.

wigle.net is an interesting site. It's worth checking out to see if your network is on the hacker's radar screen. They have a great interactive map that allows you to type in your physical address and zoom into all of the networks (open and secured) that have been found by war drivers in your neighborhood.

Is your unsecured network listed on the Internet for everyone to see?

Wi-Fi Security for Dummies

There are 4 basic levels of Wi-Fi security: "Open" (unsecured), WEP, WPA- PSK, and 802.1X. Let's walk through these techno-acronyms and explain these basic levels of security in less technical terms.

• "Open" is just that, open to all comers without any basic level of security. Like leaving your front door unlocked for anyone to enter, open networks are just a bad idea.

• WEP is the lowest level of security available on most Wi-Fi networks. Unfortunately, WEP have fundamental flaws that make it easy to hack and software on the Internet can crack WEP security in 10 minutes. WEP is equivalent to locking your screen door; it may keep your neighbor out, but it takes little effort to break in.

• WPA is the successor to WEP that is more difficult to crack. WPA is comparable to having a single lock on your front door, and giving a key to everyone you want to give access to. Keys can be shared or walked away with when someone leaves the network. The challenge with WPA is removing someone requires the entire network to be re-keyed and new keys re-distributed to valid users.

• "802.1X" is called enterprise-level security because it provides the highest level of Wi-Fi security available. 802.1X is widely deployed by Fortune 500 companies with a RADIUS Server and eliminates the common key problem by providing a unique key for each valid user every time they enter the network. This is analogous to the room key used in hotels. Each authorized user gets a new unique key every time they enter the network valid only for the time they are on the network.

The Five Deadly Dangers of Unsecured WiFi Networks

Once hackers have access to your WiFi network, they can readily capture personal and business information. There are two types of WiFi attacks. Passive attacks, where the hacker captures your network traffic, are almost impossible to detect because the hacker never joins your network. They can sit silently with their antenna tuned into your network and capture gigabytes of network traffic for off-line analysis at a later time. Active attacks, where the hacker joins the network, can be the most devastating because they can launch active attacks into the network and onto your devices on the network.

There are 5 attacks that WiFi hackers can very easily & readily perform on your wireless network with very little effort or expense. The first two are passive attacks, and the last 3 are active attacks. But make no mistake - all of these attacks can be deadly.

Deadly Attack #1: Account and Password Capture. There are several applications that send your account and passwords in clear text over the network. For example, every time a POP3 mail account checks for new e-mail, the account name & password are in the clear as part of the data transfer. Anyone sniffing the network traffic can easily get your e-mail account information. Once they have that information, they can access your e-mail account at their leisure, monitoring for personal information without leaving a trace. From there, any confidential information they can get from your account just escalates their attack.

Deadly Attack #2: E-mail, IM and Web Site Traffic Capture - It is very easy to monitor and capture all of the e-mail traffic sent over an unsecured wireless network. Since most e-mail is sent in clear-text, and instant messaging is sent in HTML, it's very simple to capture the traffic and mine the traffic off line for any “interesting” information at a later time. By monitoring your wireless traffic, all of the HTML data can be captured & reconstituted as web pages on the hackers PC to see exactly what web sites & content you are surfing over the wireless network.

Deadly Attack #3: Accessing Data on Your PC. Let's face it, it's pretty easy to turn file sharing on, and then forget to turn it off when you attach to an open WiFi network. Once file sharing has been left on or the personal firewall is mis-configured, a hacker can readily access you PC and hard drive across the wireless network. Firewalls are also easy to mis-configure or turn off, and forget to turn back on. With older versions of Windows (NT, W2K), if improperly configured, it's easy prey for a hacker to get in over the network, log-in as a null session and take over your platform.

Deadly Attack #4: Access to the Corporate Network. If you’re wireless network is connected to a corporate network through a site-to-site VPN, an open wireless network punches a hole through the network, and opens up both sides of the VPN to anyone attaching to the network. Another threat is with improperly configured client VPNs which can be more easily compromised to provide the hacker access through the VPN.

Deadly Attack #5: SPAM and Virus Launching over the Wireless Network. Unsecured Networks provide are an ideal launch point from which hackers can launch SPAM & Virus attacks because it is very difficult to track the source back to them. From a distance, the SPAMmer can launch the SPAM (from your e-mail account if he or she sniffed your e-mail account info) without repudiation. When the ISP or FBI tracks down the violator, the trail points to your network, and possibly your e-mail account. The liabilities to the owner of the unsecured network are still newly contended battlegrounds for the lawyers.

Hacking open networks isn't as hard as one may think. See this flash demonstration on the tools hackers use to crack WiFi networks.

The Benefits of Wireless Networks

It seems these days that wireless networks are everywhere.With Wi-Fi capabilities built into most new laptop computers, and with relatively inexpensive network adapter cards, Wi-Fi is within reach of most PC users.

The freedom and benefits of an un-tethered connection to your network are very compelling:

• Create your network when wiring isn’t practical. Many office and warehouse spaces find it very difficult or impossible to lay wire for networking. Wi-Fi is a cost-effective and convenient alternative to a wired network.
• Expand your network with no additional wiring costs. This is especially beneficial in home offices that aren’t pre-wired for Ethernet, or for small businesses that are rapidly expanding, or frequently reconfiguring their office layouts.
• Information at your fingertips anywhere you work. The ability to access your e-mail, the Internet, and network-based applications in a conference room or another office gives you additional degrees of productivity and convenience.
• Doctors can carry patient records on a laptop or tablet PC to each exam room and stay connected all the time.
• Lawyers can bring their lap tops into depositions and conferences and fact check or access networked data instantly.
• Project members can collaborate in team meetings each with instant information available across the wireless network to accelerate decisions with immediately available information.
• Wireless at home means delivers the ability to work anywhere in the house, or deck. The ability to be around your family when you’re catching up on e-mails is truly convenient.

Beware the Dark Side

Despite the benefits, there is a dark side to wireless. Without the proper security measures in place, your business and personal information can easily be retrieved over the wireless network. With a $100 directional antenna and free software available on the internet, hackers can access your network traffic and PC data from as far as a mile away.

In June 2004, a world-wide “war drive” event among the hacker community uncovered over 230,000 wireless networks and posted their positions on the Internet. A startling 61.6% of all the networks they surveyed had no security whatsoever, and the majority of the other networks had the weakest form of security that can be cracked in under 15 minutes.

Wireless Security has tremendous benefits, especially when secured and properly managed. Pay attention to the security and gain the benefits without the risks.