No privacy on internet

johnmcdnl

I have eircom broadband and I'm living in a very rural location - it's a fair distance til the next house anyways so...

Just wondering - do i really need privacy on my internet settings such as WPA keys or WEPs because there's not going to be anyone bar my household using it...

is it necessary for me to actually use these privacy settings or it is just good practice

Random

you don't have to lock your door either if you don't want to.

realistically if you're in the arse hole of nowhere though you'll probably notice the white van outside of the person camped in your back garden trying to steal your internet.

don't see any harm in good practice though.

johnmcdnl

so these settings are only to stop people stealing my internet - so in other words nothing to worry about for me...

thankin you - I shall go disable all those silly settings that wreck my head when I have to type a f***ing 26 letter code into the PS3 to get it connected to the internet to find I made one mistake so i have to start again

Random

you sould use the "shared key" option and wpa which means that you can do something more memorable as the password.

aidanodr

And so some evenings unknown car / white van pulls up on the road outside. Few weeks / months later at 6am in the morning a Garda specialist squad arrives at your house, arrests YOU for downloading child porn.

If the above scenario floats your boat then by all means leave your wireless open to all.

Cheers
Aidan

PogMoThoin

aidanodr wrote: »

And so some evenings unknown car / white van pulls up on the road outside. Few weeks / months later at 6am in the morning a Garda specialist squad arrives at your house, arrests YOU for downloading child porn.

If the above scenario floats your boat then by all means leave your wireless open to all.

Cheers
Aidan

They've got to find it on Your pc

Its a rural area, You're fine without security

aidanodr

You miss my point.

If your router security is open it means anyone OUTSIDE in a car and within a certain radius can hijack YOUR internet wirelessly on their laptop and download questionable stuff.

At the ISP logs these downloads will be attributed to YOU, the router owner, not the downloader outside, who is long gone.

Whats the problem with setting the security anyway, it takes a short time. If you use a pass key type option it can be memorable to you. PLUS once you have the laptops / PC's in the house setup with the passkey, thats it. The machines remember the passkey in the future, unless you change it some time again!

Aidan

PogMoThoin

If he lives in a rural area in the middle of nowhere chances are nobody will ever use his connection or even know its there. The radius of a wireless router outside Your home after penetrating the exterior walls is only going to be a couple of metres, after that You'd not get a usable signal.

Isp's don't log downloads

Freddie59

PogMoThoin wrote: »

If he lives in a rural area in the middle of nowhere chances are nobody will ever use his connection or even know its there. The radius of a wireless router outside Your home after penetrating the exterior walls is only going to be a couple of metres, after that You'd not get a usable signal.

Isp's don't log downloads

My friend, you are being extremely naieve. And advising others to be the same. As someone already said - you needn't lock your door either - but you do.

PogMoThoin

Freddie59 wrote: »

My friend, you are being extremely naieve. And advising others to be the same. As someone already said - you needn't lock your door either - but you do.

City slicker ^^

I'm not being naive. If he lives in rural Ireland, not on a main road, a few miles from town with a field or two between him and his nearest neighbour there is absolutely no need to lock his wireless. He only needs to lock it if He's got others that could use it living nearby.

Doors in rural Ireland are usually unlocked btw

johnmcdnl wrote: »

I have eircom broadband and I'm living in a very rural location - it's a fair distance til the next house anyways so...

jor el

aidanodr wrote: »

You miss my point.

If your router security is open it means anyone OUTSIDE in a car and within a certain radius can hijack YOUR internet wirelessly on their laptop and download questionable stuff.

The likelihood of that happening is so remote it's practically impossible. Unless someone is going to drive around the whole of Ireland, stopping outside every single one of the 1.4 million houses, and waiting the required time to identify any Wifi networks, this is never going to happen.

Wifi range tends to be very short on a home router too, and penetration through concrete walls is very poor. Even if they do find you and connect, it's going to be piss-poor.

aidanodr wrote: »

At the ISP logs these downloads will be attributed to YOU, the router owner, not the downloader outside, who is long gone.

The only criminal cases brought so far to court have been based on far more than ISP logs, and they also used the physical evidence following a search. A criminal case would never be based on that alone.

aidanodr wrote: »

Whats the problem with setting the security anyway, it takes a short time.

If you don't need it, then there's no need for it. Makes it very easy to have visitors, or when someone in the household gets a new smart phone.

aidanodr wrote: »

If you use a pass key type option it can be memorable to you.

A memorable pass key will be much easier to crack too.

In all fairness, there are much simpler ways of getting free Internet without trying to find someone in the middle of nowhere with an unsecured wireless network. If someone wants to get onto your network, then they will, otherwise no one is even going to be looking.

jay93

And the chances of someone pulling up to steal in your internet in a very rural area is most impossible lots of people leave their wireless open even in highly populated areas where you live i wouldnt worry about wireless security no harm in turning it off so you dont have to type the long code into the ps3 you could either create your own wpa password to make it easier to type in i think the minimum caracters is 8 for wpa so you could make the key alot shorter and easier to remember but i wouldnt say there is much point:D

johnmcdnl

Well seeing as the walls in my house are 4 feet thick because its an ancient farmhouse and I get it hard to get the internet upstairs because of the walls I doubt anyone outside the house is going to get too much of a signal unless they come up and sit on the windowsill outside the house with a clear line of sight to the router

I should be sound to stop anyone outside the house getting a chance to use my connection to get child porn or the likes...

jor el wrote: »

If you don't need it, then there's no need for it. Makes it very easy to have visitors, or when someone in the household gets a new smart phone.

yeah this is pretty much what I'm thinking - When I have friends over they sometimes have their laptops with them so it's annoying as anything trying to get them connected to the internet...
and then whenever I get a new PS3 or a DS or whatever else new I get I always have to start looking for codes and it's just effort like... and i hate effort when it's not needed.... i know it's not often you get a new thing like that but sometimes when I have connection problem with them it's just easier to reset all the internet connections on them and go from scratch - and not having security codes makes that job easier too...

I just wasn't sure if there was any other reason bar stopping other people from stealing your internet to actually use these passwords..

watty

jor el wrote: »

The likelihood of that happening is so remote it's practically impossible. Unless someone is going to drive around the whole of Ireland, stopping outside every single one of the 1.4 million houses, and waiting the required time to identify any Wifi networks, this is never going to happen.

Wifi range tends to be very short on a home router too, and penetration through concrete walls is very poor. Even if they do find you and connect, it's going to be piss-poor.

That would be Google Street view then.


An MMDS dish might extend range to 1km.

I'd agree that getting your Internet pinched is very very unlikely, but it's good to be in the habit of Security.


We have up to 2 x Sony PMP, 2 x netbooks, Archos, 7 x laptops and 3 x Smart phones that can use our WiFi. It's a one off task to add something to the WiFi (we actually have two wifi points and use same password on both as they are on same LAN anyway).
We don't use the Nintendo DS as they only support WEP and we can see Neighbours's WiFi SSIDs even though we are rural.

Make sure all clients by default use Infrastructure Only by default as that avoids problems when out and about.

elderlemon

Only last month I was driving past Lough Derg in a fairly remote part with no data service at all. Some friendly local was kind enough to have wifi enabled with no security and I couldn't resist - needed to read an email and they were the closest.

Now I didn't see a house anywhere near me. Not sure how far the signal travelled but I wouldn't rely on 4 foot walls and hills to keep anything secure. As others have said it only takes a minute to set up and using a shared code (friendly password) takes away all the pain.

moonboy52

Why take the risk of someone using your network for potential nefarious means?

For the sake of setting up a WPA shared key and taking a couple of minutes to enter it into your devices is a no-brainer in my opinion

Ronin247

I would love to be able to do this.I cant find or remember my wep security code so no one can use my system including friends.I tried putting in the number into the browser(192.168.1.254) and it doesnt recognise it.does anyone know another way??

sorry to hijack thread.

aidanodr

Ronin247 wrote: »

I would love to be able to do this.I cant find or remember my wep security code so no one can use my system including friends.I tried putting in the number into the browser(192.168.1.254) and it doesnt recognise it.does anyone know another way??

sorry to hijack thread.

When you entered this number were you wireless or wired? If wireless, try get a network cable and plug directly into a port on the router itself. See if that works. When Wired the wireless security is not applicable!

192.168.1.254 is the addy? Eircom Router so??

With the PC wired ( and assuming XP ( sorry if wrong )) - Click START, select RUN, type in CMD and press OK. At the C:blah blah\> prompt type:

ipconfig/all

You may need to scroll up the screen to see the info. Looking for DHCP / Gateway address - is 192.168.1.254 there OR is it something else? If something else, try that ..

And of course - you could reset the router with a paper clip at the back

Aidan

vanman

excuse me but is the point being misssed here,but if your security is switched off,not alone can locals tap into your internet connection,but computers miles away can tap into your internet connection as well,with viruses etc,having secutity switch on is a must if you wanna avoide trouble.with my N95 fone i can tap into UPC's internet connection on my street with no problem,even the houses across the street,and i dont have UPC in my house-so be carefull out there!

watty

The WPA only affects the Wireless LAN connection, nothing to do with public Internet access.

The address to configure the router via the Web page is almost always your Gateway (GW)

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\watty>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter LAN Batcave:

        Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : lan
        IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.127
        Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
        Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

C:\watty>

You should always use the cabled ethernet connection (RJ45 plug), not WiFi, to change any WiFi settings.

aidanodr

vanman wrote: »

.... but if your security is switched off,not alone can locals tap into your internet connection,but computers miles away can tap into your internet connection as well,with viruses etc ...

The wifi radius around a home router isnt miles, more like meters at most.

Aidan

watty

up to 1km if someone points an MMDS dish. I've experimented!

aidanodr

watty wrote: »

up to 1km if someone points an MMDS dish. I've experimented!

Interesting ...

Does this count if you are getting bband in over copper / fibre? OR via a dish only?

"if someone points an MMDS dish"???

Aidan

watty

It's got nothing to do with how you get your broadband. It's simply connecting to WiFi.

If you put an MMDS dish each on a pair of WiFi bridges with timing adjusted you can get 8km. I have an Omni outdoor WiFi aerial that will give 2 or 3 km to an MMDS type dish.

aidanodr

HI Watty,

OK, I didnt compute what you were saying. Im still working on Brain v 1.4, I reckon you got the recent 2.0 upgrade?

From what you are saying WITH THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT one can get up to 2 or 3 km and more. But in the OPs message I got the impression he had a regular wired router with wifi connected to his phoneline ( eircom broadband ), so no MMDS dish? If thats the case then HIS radius will be quiet small??

hey - you could set yourself up as a mini service provider there - charge the neighbours ...

Aidan

bobbytables

watty wrote: »

It's got nothing to do with how you get your broadband. It's simply connecting to WiFi.

If you put an MMDS dish each on a pair of WiFi bridges with timing adjusted you can get 8km. I have an Omni outdoor WiFi aerial that will give 2 or 3 km to an MMDS type dish.

That's exactly right. I did the same, but with a Satellite dish while working on my PhD.

There continues to be confusion on these boards from time to time regarding the difference between the means of delivering a broadband service to your residence and how you share that connection with devices within your residence. The technologies are not the same and carry with them their own inherent set of issues with regards security.

Some security facts

• Security is not a solution, it is a process.
• You don't turn a key and say "wahay!! I'm secure". At best, you say "I have improved the security", because there is no such thing as 100% secure and what you have really done is made it more difficult for certain people in certain conditions to get access to certain things.
• On one side of the scale we have freedom and on the other side we have security. In environments with greater security, beneficiaries pay the price of reduced freedom and flexibility E.g. having to remember passwords, etc. In environments with complete freedom, then beneficiaries pay the price of no protection and my advice in that situation is to be bloody sure of the more obvious consequences of such a decision.
• Everyone has their own perception and understanding of the environment by which they are currently in, and from that determine the level of risk. By estimating this level of risk (again based on perception & understanding), they decide which side of the spectrum (Freedom - to - Security) they will lean towards.

Your Broadband Availability
Inside your house you may have been given a device that connects to the cable/phone line/etc, which serves as the means for delivering broadband to your house. If you are getting broadband wirelessly, this device will be connected to an antenna of some sort (and use technologies such as WiMAX, 3G, etc). So by wirelessly in this case we are not referring to Wifi. Sometimes these devices include the functions of many devices in one. So a single device could provide the means of connecting you to a broadband service, and also provide means of sharing that broadband connection with several devices within the house. This can be achieved typically using wired ethernet (running cables), but more popularly using Wifi.

In many of the cases of network security at home, people are referring to the security of your wifi network and little else. How devices/computers with a wireless capability can connect to your wifi access point (nevermind being routed to the your broadband connection and subsequently the internet at this stage). If I was an attacker (I assure you I am certainly not) and I wanted to connect to your wireless network, to be honest it probably would not be for access to the Internet. If I run a scan from a laptop to see a list of wireless networks, that does not necessarily mean that each access point discovered will have an available route to the Internet. Many/Most will, but I could just plug in a Wireless AP here in my house and not connect it to anything, and if you were outside you would see that as just another wireless access point beacon. It's not until you actually connected successfully to the wireless access point you would soon discover the availability of an Internet connection or not. Before that however, you may have something much more interesting. The other computers/devices connected to that same wifi network.

Lets say I'm parked outside your house, I connect to your wifi network, at this stage I can do a range of things from requesting Internet resources via your broadband connection. A popular choice amongst wifi-hijackers. However I may scan to see who else is on that same network, and then start attacking those machines (covertly). I could in theory, start browsing your hard drive, taking and leaving whatever files I please, amongst many other activities. This is a real concern for anyone using a public Wifi hotspots, usually found in hotels/pubs/coffee shops/etc. Penetrating a private wifi network is about becoming a rogue member of that network, but the network treats you like a legitimate user and offers you such privileges.

The bottom line
I appreciate that the OP is in a rural setting, where the likelihood of non-residents being in close proximity is less than in a more urban area. However they can, and even people a fair distance away with the right equipment just need to turn 360 degrees at their current position to eventually find your network. So that puts the distance barrier out the window. Without at least some security on your home network, those people could connect to your wifi network and do any/all of the things I mentioned above. Also in an area where 90% of people have security and 10% don't, who do you think will be the likely target. Attackers look for people with little or no regard for security, because you are the low hanging fruit.

Also the OP mentioned that they regularly have visitors/friends/etc come to the house with devices and want to join the network. Lets say you did give someone access. Then you fell out over something, that potential enemy now still has access to your wifi network, so perhaps in the right circumstances that person will want to cause you harm and will park outside your house. Perhaps there heard you rant on about why security is a pain in the ass and that you don't really need it. Damn, I wouldn't want an enemy of mine to think that about me.

Rant Over
Right that's me done. I'm not telling anyone what they should do, that's up to you/them. I just think that people need to be aware of the consequences of their decisions and if that requires a little education, then so be it. I believe in Germany for example, the excuse "Someone else your honor must have broke in to my Wifi network and downloaded that" will not stand to you in court, so you need to make sure you have at least made a conscious effort to tend towards the security end of the spectrum in terms of your wifi network in such a case.

watty

Great stuff.

A link range is the gain of aerials at both ends added.

So WiFi monopole to monopole is about 100m outdoor.
The built in WiFi aerial has a gain of about 2dBi. Sometimes more or less. Range depends on the aerial and power of laptop and aerial and power of Airpoint less attenuation of any walls etc.

My Omni aerial isn't really omni. It's more a squashed doughnut or bagel shape of coverage to get about 17dbi gain. Each 6dB doubles the distance. So that aerial to a WiFi Airpoint is about x2 x2 distance or 400m.

An MMDS style dish (or actual MMDS dish with WiFi aerial) is about 26dBi so 26 -2 = 24. 24/6 = 4, x2, x2 x2 x2, That's 16x distance. About 1.6km with MMDS dish one end facing room with window and regular WiFi in it. More realistically 1km

Put a MMDS dish at BOTH ends and you get 8km to 12km, maybe 20km!


Bobby Tables points out (And I'll check my sanitizers for passing strings to my SQL before he gets near them) the more serious risk is not your Internet consumption. It's likely that via WiFi a hacker can read your PC's hard drive. The Router firewall prevents most Linux/Windows/MAC OS vulnerabilities get exercised from the Public Internet. That's why you want to use a Router with a Cable Modem or a 3G Dongle or else turn of a lot of PC services.

CathalDublin

Just use security, you'd be mad not to!
if you don't want to use security I'm going to assume you have no passwords on your laptop/desktop in which case its not gonna take long for anyone on your network to access everything on your PC Photos/temp files/etc. You don't need to be an expert hacker just anyone who knows anything about windows

Hobbes

johnmcdnl wrote: »

so these settings are only to stop people stealing my internet - so in other words nothing to worry about for me...

Until someone uses your open wireless connection to download kiddy porn or some other dodgy site the cops are watching. Then have fun explaining it when it is tracked back to you.

bobbytables

watty wrote: »

And I'll check my sanitizers for passing strings to my SQL before he gets near them

Well played sir! /tips hat

When I was young I was once told...
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, and if you do what you shouldn't, you'll definitely get a slap!". It's great advice.

"Don't be a actin the knob" is a another great one.

watty

bobbytables:
Is it your mum that has the Open WiFi serving kitteh war, lol cats and mirrored images and text?

ƃuıʇɔǝuuoɔ ɔɐɯ pǝʌoɹddɐun ʎuɐ oʇ sıɥʇ op oʇ sǝʇılıʇn llɐʇsuı uɐɔ noʎ ʇɹʍuǝdo ǝsn noʎ ɟı