People Using Your Wireless!!
- Thread starter graemewh
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karym6
DW Regular
wep stands for wired equivalent protocol.
it is less secure than wpa as it sends its authentication in plaintext, meaning anyone sniffing the connection can crack they key rather easily.
wpa (wifi protected access) is much more secure as it doesnt send any part of the key in plain text. Basically, it sends encrypted challenges based on the password - making it harder for someone to crack the key.
dont forget, regardless of what security you use - adding mac address filters to your ap will significantly increase your security. Most recent ap's/routers will let you do this easily and quickly.
it is less secure than wpa as it sends its authentication in plaintext, meaning anyone sniffing the connection can crack they key rather easily.
wpa (wifi protected access) is much more secure as it doesnt send any part of the key in plain text. Basically, it sends encrypted challenges based on the password - making it harder for someone to crack the key.
dont forget, regardless of what security you use - adding mac address filters to your ap will significantly increase your security. Most recent ap's/routers will let you do this easily and quickly.
beady
Inactive User
karym6 said:
That's just plain wrong. In WEP there are two forms of authentication, either Open or Shared. Open isn't really authentication, you just connect to an AP (access point) and start sending traffic, if you've got the same key, it will work. Shared authentication sends a cleartext message from the AP to the client, the client encrypts it and sends it back. If both the client and AP have the same (i.e. correct) key, the AP accepts the connection.
WEP is weak for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is that the 24 bit IV (initialization vector) tagged onto the key is too small, and can lead to collisions. WPA increases this to 48 bits. Also, WPA uses TKIP, which means the key changes with time.
The quickest attacks on WEP are 'replay' attacks. This is where you send and AP a packet it has previously sent out. It will re-encrypt this packet and send it back, giving out lots of information in the process. WPA prevents this by using a Message Integrity Code (MIC).
It's a matter of opinion, but I don't think MAC filtering adds anything useful to security. It's VERY easy to change a client's MAC to a valid one, and the filtering is a pain if you have lots of different clients. Just use WPA with a decent (read long and random) passphrase and that'll be all the security you need. As for WPA vs WPA2, in real terms they are secure. Technically WPA is vulnerable to some theoretical attacks which allow decryption of captured packets, but as far as I know both are secure wrt preventing access to your internet connection (assuming a good password).karym6 said:
karym6
DW Regular
that answer is even more vague than mine
the open method doesnt even use the key to authenicate - correct, it only uses the key to encrypt traffice between the the ap and thr client. With the open system, clients will try to connect regardless of the key.
with shared encryption, a plaintext challenge is sent to the ap, which in turn sends a plaintext challnege back to the client which then tries to encrypt the challenge using its key which it then sends back to the ap (all in clear text still) which in turn compares it to the orgianal plaintext challenge. If it can, hey presto you are in the network. If not then your out. This is the weak point of wep, and is probably the most common security model.
Essentially, wpa is far more secure than wep - and eve it has its bad points. One interesting article I read a while back is here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/15/wep_crack_interview/
food for thought for anyone still using wep I should think
beady
Inactive User
karym6 said:
This isn't in cleartext, You've already said you encrypt the challenge and send the result back. You can only produce the ciphertext if you know the key, so the AP decrypts the ciphertext it gets back to check if it matches what was sent out. There's no 'plain text transfer of the key' here. Infact, WPA uses a similar authentication protocol. Provided the keys are long enough, it's a secure way to authenticate and prove you know the key, without having to pass the key across the network.
karym6
DW Regular
beady, I havent once said the key is sent in plaintext - the connection requests are sent in plaintext.
WPA keys are much, much larger than those used in wep and are re-vectored each time a connection tries to establish.
My post which you have misquoted, may be unlcear - at no point does any key get sent between the client and the ap in plaintext. Instead, all the information passed between the two is.
Essentially, someone asked here which is the difference and why is wpa more secure than wep. The answer is that wep sends information in plaintext - wpa doesnt. To bloat the answer some more, wep is also less secure as the keys are much smaller than wpa. Wep is also less secure than wpa as the way the key is encrypted always stays the same, in wpa it changes, thus making it a lot (when I say a lot, read a <b>a lot</b>) harder to crack compared to wpa.
Now, that doesnt mean wpa is un crackable - it is and it has been cracked. However it is right now, the most sevure way to protect a wireless network. Wep is insufficient to protect a wireless network from unauthorised access.
WPA keys are much, much larger than those used in wep and are re-vectored each time a connection tries to establish.
My post which you have misquoted, may be unlcear - at no point does any key get sent between the client and the ap in plaintext. Instead, all the information passed between the two is.
Essentially, someone asked here which is the difference and why is wpa more secure than wep. The answer is that wep sends information in plaintext - wpa doesnt. To bloat the answer some more, wep is also less secure as the keys are much smaller than wpa. Wep is also less secure than wpa as the way the key is encrypted always stays the same, in wpa it changes, thus making it a lot (when I say a lot, read a <b>a lot</b>) harder to crack compared to wpa.
Now, that doesnt mean wpa is un crackable - it is and it has been cracked. However it is right now, the most sevure way to protect a wireless network. Wep is insufficient to protect a wireless network from unauthorised access.
beady
Inactive User
Sorry Karym6, I'm really not trying to start an argument. I just want to clear things up.
It was certainly not my intention to cause argument, I just think that your original reply was wrong and needed clarification. No hard feelings
. WEP cracking does not rely on sniffing the initial authentication. Yes, the initial challenge is sent in plaintext, but the response can only be generated with access to the private key. This is entirely equivalent to WPA. If you have access to the WPA or WEP private key, you can generate a valid response and authenticate. The authentication procedure is NOT the weak point in WEP. In fact, most WEP networks don't bother with authentication and just allow anyone to authenticate. You are right that the key in WEP is too short, and is re-used for ALL communication. This is the problem with WEP.karym6 said:
It was certainly not my intention to cause argument, I just think that your original reply was wrong and needed clarification. No hard feelings
graemewh
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can someone help please just went into my router settings and when click on the dhcp client list this comes up
192.168.2.5 Jess-PC 00:0d:f0:3a:d5:92
and I dont know who this is, can somebody help me for the best way to stop this please, is this someone on my connection?
192.168.2.5 Jess-PC 00:0d:f0:3a:d5:92
and I dont know who this is, can somebody help me for the best way to stop this please, is this someone on my connection?
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If you don't recognise it then I would say it's someone using your wireless, as said at the beginning of this thread set up WEP or WPA to secure your network
karym6
DW Regular
lol, and to go over the other posts on this thread, enable mac filtering
I took a look at the connection log on my router, there are tons of people trying to connect to me now thank god its locked down.
I took a look at the connection log on my router, there are tons of people trying to connect to me now
thank god its locked down.
Psy
Inactive User
My reply to a similar problem
Someine else having similar problems;
https://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1034086&postcount=5
Someine else having similar problems;
https://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1034086&postcount=5
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use WPA or WPA2 (definitely not WEP)[thanks beady!] with a good (long) password (or pass phrase) with numbers and symbols in it
mac filtering is a very mickey-mouse measure
mac filtering can be overcome by anybody able to crack WEP
mac filtering just give you a false sense of security
mac filtering is a very mickey-mouse measure
mac filtering can be overcome by anybody able to crack WEP
mac filtering just give you a false sense of security
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beady
Inactive User
You mean use WPA. lol.conorc said:
You're absolutely right about MAC filtering though. It's pointless to enable it. The same goes for things like turning off ssid broadcasts and disabling dhcp. The WPA security is all you need, and anything else just adds to the hassle of connecting legitimate users. As long as the password is good, no other 'security' measures are required.
dhcp will normally report all current leases: it doesn't mean that that they are still in use, just that they haven't expired yet
yes disable SSID broadcast and also descrease the signal strenght so you the signal doesnt go outside of the house.
karym6
DW Regular
I am not sure that decreasing the signal strength is an option for most consumer routers - it is an area where wireless penetration is a desired factor...
