Comments on: How To Secure Your Wireless Network Connection

By: What To Do When You Get A Copyright Infringement Notice from ISP | EMDMA

What To Do When You Get A Copyright Infringement Notice from ISP | EMDMA — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:22:44 +0000

[...] in the copyright infringement letter. If it is someone outside of your house, you need to look at strengthening the security on your wireless router. If it seems to be just one person, your router will likely have a way for you to block them [...]

By: Barry McKeever

Barry McKeever — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:37:50 +0000

Followed the above procedures to setup a secure wireless network. I show my unsecure and secure connections. When I try to connect through the secure connection I am unable to connect to any web pages even though it shows me as being connected. If I use the unsecure connection everything works fine. What to do now?

Thx

By: Lesley

Lesley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:31:13 +0000

I also secured my Linksys WRT54G v5 by following the above steps and couldn’t access the internet afterwards. I had to change my router back to factory default by accessing the router through my wired desktop (easier than finding the little button). I don’t know what the problem is. I followed the steps exactly – tried it 3x’s. No internet after secured. Had to go back to default and unsecured. Linksys won’t help me without giving them another $30…warranty ended 2 months ago!

By: Data Protection

Data Protection — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:15:46 +0000

Congrats to Sean M. I can honestly say I have never heard of anyone doing that before. I think it is actually a fantastic thing to offer people who are in range of your network, but you are, of course, correct. Giving them access is one thing, but limiting that access should be an option. It seems like something that would not be too hard to cook up. Let me know if you find anything.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:53:11 +0000

I always use http://www.roadwarriorvpn.com when ever I am using public Wi-Fi. I can never trust the wireless connection when I am traveling.

By: Encryption Software

Encryption Software — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:58:55 +0000

Wow. Good for you for being so giving. I can honestly say I have never heard of anyone doing that before. I think it is actually a fantastic thing to offer people who are in range of your network, but you are, of course, correct. Giving them access is one thing, but limiting that access should be an option. It seems like something that would not be too hard to cook up. Let me know if you find anything.

By: Aibek

Aibek — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:03:12 +0000

Each router has a reset button that resets the router to factory default settings. It’s usually so small that you will need a needle or something similar to push it. Press the button and hold it for 10 or so seconds. This should reset the router back to unsecured states and wipe all added settings.

By: Simply

Simply — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:49:34 +0000

Hey can anyone please help me…
My network was unsecured and i could easily connect to the connection but yesterday the connection was set to secured automatically i want to reset it back to its previous condition means unsecured
can anyone please explain how to do that?
and also i still get my own connection option to connect to but when i do so it doesn’t allow me too and show some other problem…

I’ll really appreciate if you solve my problem…

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:04:16 +0000

Good post! Thanks!

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:21:00 +0000

This works really well. I was one of those that has had a wide open unsecure network for the last 6 years and haven’t had a problem…….yet. So I finally went through the trouble of “securing” my network, with the full wpa and everything. Well it sure is secure! Now my 2 laptops cant connect no matter how much I mess with the security settings and the set the mac ids update the drivers. Blackberry wifi wont connect. Wii is offline now. I didn’t realize it would be such a seemingly impossible task to get all my devices to be online from my wireless and still keep neighbors from leaching off my connection. Now I disabled the wpa and I still am not able to connect. Shouldn’t have messed with anything now I gotta problem

By: Wi-Fi Security – A Basic Overview | 2S2D.net

Wi-Fi Security – A Basic Overview | 2S2D.net — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:26:57 +0000

[...] Wikipedia – Wireless Security WPA-PSKGEN ZDNet PCWorld MakeUseOf.com [...]

By: How To Set Up Your Own Secured Wi-Fi Hotspot « Computer 2000 Consulting Services

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:49:05 +0000

[...] How To Secure Your Wireless Network Connection [...]

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:29:45 +0000

you may want to add a comment regarding Changing the SSID from the default and not broadcasting it.

By: Aibek

Aibek — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:58:49 +0000

You can find out your router’s IP address using infor provided in the post below, see ‘Digital Setup and Security’

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-set-up-and-secure-your-own-wi-fi-hotspot/

By: Venny

Venny — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:59:15 +0000

My problem is I put in the IP address and it never connects. I went to the CIRT.net and got the proper username and password, but where do I enter this since I can’t get a screen that asks for a user name and password? I just get a connection time out error.

By: David

David — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:54:10 +0000

Brian,

That is not correct. Anyone can sniff the traffic, see your mac address, then tell their computer to use the same mac address. Most network cards allow you to use whatever mac address you want.

WPA/WPA2 with a long, complex password is the best solution. Since you only have to type it in once, you don’t have to make it easy to remember.

Use WPA/WPA2 and don’t bother with anything else.

By: Things To Know When Using a WiFi Hotspot Or a Public PC | MakeUseOf.com

Things To Know When Using a WiFi Hotspot Or a Public PC | MakeUseOf.com — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:53:14 +0000

[...] might already know how to secure your wireless connection but what about public Wi-Fi [...]

By: Manny

Manny — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:43:08 +0000

Brian, you can spoof MAC addresses fairly easily so I wouldn’t say it’s 100% unhackable at all.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:55:05 +0000

My wireless on my laptop doesn’t work.

By: Säkra trådlösa nätverket :Nyhetsgloben

Säkra trådlösa nätverket :Nyhetsgloben — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 11:22:43 +0000

[...] göra det säkert så obehöriga inte kan ta sig in i ditt nätverk. Bloggen MakeUseOf beskriver hur man ska göra för att säkra sitt trådlösa [...]

By: Aibek

Aibek — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:32:42 +0000

I have explained this in the post. There is a link to the article that describer where you can get default password for your router.

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/cirtnet-lookup-default-passwords-electronic-devices/

Anyways, I check it out, the login details for Linksys WRT54GL are:

User ID: admin
Password: admin

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:39:24 +0000

If your router supports mac filtering (like popular open source firmware DD-WRT), this is much better than using any type of encryption. Since you basically maintaining an “allow list” of your network device’s mac ids, you will make your wireless 100% unhackable with no encryption and better performance (due to not needing to encrypt every wireless packet). To everyone else, they will see an unsecured access point but be unable to communicate with your router because their mac id is not on it’s allow list.

By: Aibek

Aibek — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:35:21 +0000

Yeah, regular folks are full of surprises

By: Souter Johnny

Souter Johnny — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:02:17 +0000

I work for BT business broadband. A few weeks ago I spoke to a customer who wanted to make his network unsecured. He wanted to do this as it was too much hassle connecting new computers to it. And besides, he lives in the country so who would be sitting in the lane outside trying to connect to his network? As they say in the Sun, You couldn’t make it up.

By: Sumit

Sumit — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:09:06 +0000

I have a problem,I have a Linksys WRT54G,I went to 192.168.1.1 When I put in the password,It says Bad username/password. I may have forgot the password,Is there a way I can find out the password? Please,help!!

By: links for 2008-12-05 at DeStructUred Blog

links for 2008-12-05 at DeStructUred Blog — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:03:28 +0000

[...] Secure Your Wireless Network. Here is WHY and HOW. | MakeUseOf.com (tags: wireless wifi howto) Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

By: Bruce M

Bruce M — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:51:52 +0000

While I agree that wireless networks should be secured, I don’t think that it is completely enough. It seems that hackers will get in no matter what. “Mr Smith” in the YouTube video did have his network secured but apparently not enough. It’s like he had his back door locked but with a weak lock that was breakable with a small hammer. Now, someone might argue about the weak lock but at the end of the day he did have his door locked but some thief was able to break in.
I think that there should be stricter laws against hackers.
Great article though on educating people about unsecured networks.

By: Aibek

Aibek — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:27:58 +0000

I didn’t mean WPA specifically but all WPA encryption types (WPA / WPA-2 etc.)

By: Aibek

Aibek — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:26:48 +0000

Never thought about this from that angle, will definitely look into it. For the basic level of security and content filtering I would recommend using OpenDNS.

- You will need to change DNS settings on your primary PC (see OpenDNS site)
- then create account on OpenDNS and select some of their filters

Aibek

By: Yeti

Yeti — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:37:34 +0000

Just curious as to why you dont recommend WPA2 ? it being harder to break than WPA. Granted none will keep a woulb be attacker out of your network (assuming they know what they are doing)

I would always recommend WPA2

Quoted from wikipedia to explain a little more:

WPA2 replaced WPA; like WPA, WPA2 requires testing and certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance. WPA2 implements the mandatory elements of 802.11i. In particular, it introduces a new AES-based algorithm, CCMP, which is considered fully secure. Certification began in September, 2004; from March 13, 2006, WPA2 certification is mandatory for all new devices to bear the Wi-Fi trademark