Wireless Hackers

[yelvertoft]

Stephen,

Having had a sleep on it, another few things that will hinder your hackers would be, on a regular basis (suggest weekly to begin with, then swap to monthly):

1) Change your network name (SSID)
2) Change the channel number
3) Change the PSK
4) Disable SSID broadcast

EVERYONE should do steps 1) and 4) as a matter of course, though perhaps not on such a regular basis as I suggest. The SSID should be a random ASCII (not just alpha-numeric) character string, as long as the router can handle.

As you appear to have people who are determined to crack into your network, doing steps 2) and 3) on a regular basis will frustrate their attempts. Doing all of the above, regularly, at the same time will really slow them down as they will have to rescan for your network and start the cracking process all over again.

Other practical measures would be to move the router to a room further away from the side facing your hackers as I suggested above, if this is not possible, ensure that there are no windows in the line of sight between your router and the receiving antenna.

Hope this helps frustrate them.

D.

[walwyn]

I live in a small village (100 houses). A friend brought his laptop around a couple of months ago switched it on and was able to pickup a unsecured wireless internet connection. None of my immediate neighbours have a wireless connection.

[Canis Vulpes]

Thank for that Yelvertoft.

I also thought of the following:-

MAC address filtering
Disabling DHCP
Changing router IP address regularly

Sadly I cannot move the router across the opposite side of the house, I would need wires for that and would negate the wireless principle. The routers current position is on the back wall nearest to my attackers. There is a radiator in the way so may offer some shielding.

2mW was too low for certain positions downstairs and I have had to increase power to 5mW to get service all over the house.

How essential is wireless internet?

I use it every evening for about four hours on and off so the other 20 hours the router could be off - Hack that one!

These guys were not simply using my Internet they were occupying 90% of my bandwidth slowing me down substantially. I guess they could have been using a peer to peer service to share files illegally.

[andy153]

Hi there, I seem to recall a news item about three or four weeks ago about someone being charged or possibly convicted of doing this to neighbours. He was using a laptop and logging into insecure WiFi points - so the police should take some action.

[Wheeler]

When someone taps into a poorly protected wireless router, using bandwidth that someone else has paid for, it's wrong.

When someone sculks in the hedgerows to sneak a free viewpoint to enjoy the entertainment that thousands of others have paid to support it's a creative use of available conditions to obtain good light?

Sounds a little like hypocrisy to me. In my view both are equally wrong for exactly the same reasons. Seeing a proponent of airshow freeloading getting steamed up about people freeloading off him appears to be karmic justice.

[jamieZ740]

Maybe they could not be bothered going downstairs to turn their router/hub on so temp connected to another :P