WiFi made Internet access convenient, but as with any kind of technology, convenience usually has tradeoffs particularly in terms of security. If you think having a secure password and encryption on your wireless access point keeps you safe, then you’d be wrong and thinking the way hackers want you to think so that you can continue being vulnerable to their attacks.

Before you take the first steps towards protecting your wireless access point from intruders, you first need to know several things that hackers don’t want you to find out, such as:

WEP Encryption is Useless and Doesn’t Offer Any Protection

If you’re using WEP encryption in your wifi access point, then you’re basically operating under a placebo and you might as well just keep the router open to the public, because it literally takes mere minutes for hackers to gain access to access points using WEP encryption. Use a stronger type of encryption like WPA2. If your router doesn’t support any other encryption besides WEP, then chances are it’s too old that you have to replace it anyway.

MAC Filtering is Easily Defeated

Many savvy home administrators use MAC filtering so that only specific machines can connect to their wifi access point. However, a hacker can easily use a wireless packet capture program to eavesdrop on the traffic, find a MAC Address that’s being allowed on the network, and then spoof their own address to gain access.

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Disabling Remote Administration Prevents Majority of Intrusions

This is once again related to the convenience vs. security issue. Many home administrators choose to enable remote administration on their routers because it allows them to configure the device without the need for a local connection. However, it also gives hackers the opportunity to get in remotely. The amount of intrusions that you will be rendering ineffective when you disable remote administration is worth it, considering that all you’re required to do is connect locally everytime you need to configure the router.

Public Hotspots Leave You Open to Man in the Middle Attacks

It doesn’t matter how good a public hotspot’s security is or how many security suites you have on your device, if you use public hotspots you leave yourself open to “man-in-the-middle” attacks, where a hacker inserts their own session into the wireless conversation between the sender and the receiver. This allows them to extract any data that they want, particularly unencrypted ones. The only way you can protect yourself from this, if you want to continue using public hotspots, is by using a secure VPN to provide another layer of security.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2014 at 10:00 am and is filed under Data Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.