For a long time, WEP was considered to be an extremely good method of encrypting wireless connections. The acronym simply means Wired Equivalent Privacy. Originally it was only available in 64-bit configuration, but soon after 128-bit and even 256-bit encryption became available. Entering a 64-bit WEP Wi-Fi key was as simple as choosing a ten character hexadecimal number. Each character represented 4 bits, making 40 bits in total, and then 24 bits were added to complete the 64-bit key. WEP however, was proved to have many flaws mainly involving the short key size, which were relatively easy to crack. WEP also does not provide for security against altered packets – a process where packets of information is intercepted by an intruder and then altered before sending them back, making it look like the intruder is valid user.

These days, WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and WPA2 have completely taken over from the old WEP encryption methods. You’ll probably still find WEP available on most routers, but it’s being phased out and someday it probably won’t be available at all. The main advantage WPA has over WEP is that it employs a powerful new feature called TKIP, or rather Temporal Key Integrity Protocol. TKIP is 128-bit, but instead of the key being static, it generates a new key for every packet of information that is sent, meaning it is a lot more secure. WPA also integrates a method of message integrity checks, used to defeat network attackers intercepting and altering data packets. WPA2 goes even further and replaces TKIP with CCMP. CCMP is an AES based encryption method that is much stronger even than TKIP.

In the home, you’ll probably want to use an encryption method called WPA-Personal. This is sometimes also called WPA-PSK. PSK stands for Pre-Shared Key, and is designed for home users and small offices where a server is not required for authenticating messages. It works by having each wireless device such as a laptop or smart phone authenticating directly with the wireless access point using the same key. Offices and large buildings may employ WPA-Enterprise. You can’t generally use this without a complicated authentication server set-up, but it does provide additional security.

Both WPA-SPK and WPA-Enterprise are available in WPA2, meaning even home users can now benefit from AES encryption over their Wi-Fi connections. All of these methods can transmit data at maximum speed, and you won’t notice any speed differences between each type of encryption. Therefore the recommendation is to use the best encryption you can. This means going for WPA2-PSK where you can in a home environment. There are new and more exotic types of Wi-Fi encryption becoming available, but for now even advanced users will find WPA2 more than adequate for most security applications.

If you are using wireless connections, you may want to check your router to make sure that it does not use encryption that can easily be cracked by users with the right toolset.

You can backup the wireless network settings from Windows 7 and these settings can be easily saved to a USB stick. You simply use the USB stick to import the settings to laptops and desktops added to your network, even if they are using XP or Vista. To do this, follow these simple steps and set your network up for a no-hassle system.

Click the wireless network symbol from the taskbar and then click “Open Network and Sharing Center.” Alternatively, you may go to the Start Menu and open the Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center.

In the left control pane, you will see “Manage wireless networks”. Click on this and it will open the Manage Wireless Networks window. Here you will see a list of all wireless networks to which you have connected in the past.

In this example, only a single network is listed. That is because all other networks were intentionally removed for security reasons. This is not normally necessary, but should you decide to delete a network, simply highlight it and press Delete.

Double-click the network that you want to manage and a window showing all of its properties will be presented.

Click the bottom blue link next to the Windows shield in order to save these network settings to a USB flash drive. The flash drive that you choose does not need to have a high capacity. Preferably, use a 1-2GB flash drive and use it solely for the purpose of importing network settings. Once you click the link to copy the network profile, the Copy Network Settings wizard will initiate.

Now plug in your flash drive and wait just a moment while the drive is detected. When the drive is detected, the Next button will turn blue. Click the Next button when it is ready. The settings will only take a matter of seconds to copy to the flash drive. When it is done, click Close.

If you go to the Computer Panel and double-click your flash drive, you will see one new folder, “SMRTNTKY” and you will also see a new file called “setupSNK.exe”. These are the saved network settings, so do not delete them.

To import the Wireless Network Settings, first plug the flash drive in a laptop or other USB accessible device, such as a printer, which you want to add to your network. To keep it simple, let us say it is a laptop. The Wireless Setup Wizard will launch. Click on Yes and the settings will be automatically imported. You will most likely receive a notification of this. Click OK and the laptop is now connected to the network. You can use this for multiple computer additions to your network without the need for going through an extensive setup procedure. This is very helpful indeed and saves time.

This printer too though is pretty huge and not something you’d be at all comfortable having in your living room.  It’s limited too, requiring a USB or wired network connection.  What was really needed then was a smaller, better option.

Fortunate then that Samsung, along with various other pieces of review kit, sent me their new ML-1865W Mono Laser last week to test.  Now I was expecting a big, bulky and franky ugly printer to arrive.  Imagine my surprise then when a small sleek black box arrived, measuring only 341 x 224 x 184 mm.

This printer is undeniably two things, dinky and lovely.  It’s no bigger than a typical inkjet printer when closed up, and the high-quality piano black plastic body means it wouldn’t look bad in anybody’s home office or living room.

I was keen then to see if a laser printer this small could actually perform.  The first test was in connecting it wirelessly to my network.  The printer can be attached directly to a computer via USB, but can also connect via WiFi to your home or small-office network.  It does this though the pressing of only two buttons, one on the printer and one on your router (both called WPS).  This would, theoretically, pair the devices almost instantly.

Suffice to say I was slightly sceptical at this claim, but the printer connected effortlessly to my TalkTalk home router and was ready and available on the network in around ten seconds.  Eager to make sure this wasn’t a fluke, I took the printer to a neighbour where their BT Home Hub flatly refused to acknowledge the printer’s existence.  This I don’t think is a fault with the printer itself, as it will be designed to work in a standards-compliant way.  It would involve a probably lengthy call to your ISP’s technical support however and some tinkering in your router’s administration settings to get it working.  This might just be too much for some people who might just give up and connect it via USB instead.

The driver install is simple enough, even with the printer connected via WiFi, though this could cause some issues if you are using the printer with Windows XP.  Alas I wasn’t in a position to be able to test this scenario as all my computers run Windows 7 and I’m not mad enough to put XP back on them!

The true test of a printer is in it’s speed, noise and print quality.  Samsung claim the ML-1865W has a startup time of 8.5 seconds and then, oddly, don’t claim any figure for a page per minute (ppm) speed.  I thought this odd and perhaps an indication that the printer would be slow.  To test it I threw my Windows 7 Power Users Guide at it, a graphics-heavy PDF running to 170 pages.

True to their word, within 10 seconds the first page began to appear, this first page being the cover with full graphics on it.  The printer then speedily churned out the rest of the book at around 20 pages per minute, which is very impressive for a small, low cost machine.

The quality was excellent as well and overall I’m very impressed, it was very quiet too, in fact probably the quietest printer I’ve ever used.  Elsewhere there’s a 150 sheet tray and a 100 sheet capacity output tray.  The printer will print graphics and text at 1200 x 1200 dpi and connects to your wireless network by 802.11 b, g or n.

Overall then the ML-1865W is a lovely printer to have.  It’s quiet, quick and attractive with excellent print results and can be bought online for as little as $69.99 in the US and £80 in the UK (at least these were the cheapest prices I could find).

The only downfall with this printer is the lack of support with some routers, and it might be a good idea to check with Samsung if your particular router is supported and, if not, with your ISP how easy it is to get it set up in the router’s administration interface.  This aside though if you’re after a monochrome laser for a home or home office, it’s a great unit to get and a bargain at just $70.  8/10.

You can buy the printer for instance at Amazon for that price: Samsung Electronics ML-1865W Wireless Monochrome Printer

Wireless Migrator, a software program for the Windows operating system, comes to the rescue. The portable software program can be used to backup and restore wireless networks easily. All that needs to be done to backup the wireless settings of a computer system is to execute the program after downloading and unpacking it. It will automatically scan for configured wireless networks and save them to the same directory.

The filename will usually be RestoreWireless.wnb which can be executed on the target computer to install all wireless profiles on that system as well. This will add all wireless networks to that computer system as well without having to setup and configure these manually.

In this article I am going to introduce you to the system-config-network tool that ships with the Fedora distribution. The specifics of my particular installation are:

• Fedora 10
• GNOME 2.24.3

Generally speaking networking in Linux is a no brainer. Especially when your machine receives its IP address via DHCP, it’s almost always just “plug and play”.? There are, of course, times when you have to configure your machine manually to use a static IP address. For this the system-config-network tool comes in very handy.

Starting the Tool

From the GNOME desktop go to the System menu and click on the Administration sub-menu. From there click on the Network entry (not the Network Device Control) to start up the tool. You will need the root password to start (and use) this tool.

system-config-network

As you can see (in the image to the left) the tool has a very user-friendly interface.? there are four main sections:

• Devices: This lists the devices associated with physical hardware on your machine.
• Hardware: this lists the actual networking hardware on your machine.
• DNS: The hostname and DNS servers needed for your network.
• Hosts: This allows you to add entries to the hostname routing table (/etc/hosts).

Configuring a New Device

Device Type

The first thing you need to do is to click the New button to begin the device setup wizard.

You will have six different types of devices to choose from. Most likely you will be configuring an Ethernet or a Wireless connection.

Once you have selected the type click the Forward button.

Let’s configure an Ethernet connection.

Which Hardware?

If your particular network card isn’t listed then most likely drivers haven’t been installed on your machine. Fortunately Linux has reached a point where most network cards are supported.

Select the card you want to configure and click the Forward button to continue on with your network configuration.

Network Settings

The next step is to actually configure the settings for your hardware. In this example a Static IP address is to be configured.

Enter in all of the relavent information for your network configuration.

Once you have completed this configuration click the Forward button to move on. The next screen only serves to review the information you have configured. Once you have reached that window, if the information is correct, click Apply to complete the setup of your network device.

You are probably asking yourself “Where is the DNS configuration?” Good question. The answer is simple. From the main window click on the DNS tab to reveal the location of DNS information for your network. Most likely it’s not there yet. On that tab you can edit the hostname of the machine and the primary, secondary, and tertiary DNS addresses. You will notice a lack of a Save button on this tab. In order to save this information you have to go to the File menu and click the Save entry.

Activate Your Interface

Go back to the main window and click on the Devices tab. Now select the interface you want to activate and click the Activate button to start the device. If you do not have access to the Activate button that means you have to go back to the devices tab, select the hardware you want to be able to activate, and click the Edit button.What you need to do is to click the “Allow All Users To Enable and Disable The Device” entry. Now save the changes (File | Save) and go back to Activate the device.

Your network device should now be up and running!

FON allows people to buy a wireless router from them for €30. They then share their WiFi with other Fon users and gain access to other Fon users’ connections.

Whilst many FON users are in residential areas, a few exist in public and commercial ones; there are dozens in Central London. This may rise as BT now integrates FON in their ‘Home Hub’ routers. Neuf Cegetel made a similar move.

They run a scheme which allows their users to profit. They can charge non-FON users a nominal fee to use their WiFi, so it could be extremely profitable in a central location!

La Fonera, the name of their router, transmits two SSIDs. One is encrypted, for your own private use, and one is open, for others to connect to.

If you’re interested, leave a comment to that effect and I can send you a promocode to get a €10 discount on the router.

The Netgear WGR614L Open Source Wireless-G Router is compatible to well known firmwares like Tomato and DD-WRT with several others in the making. You might be asking about the benefits of running an Open-Source router in comparison to one that is not. It all boils down to something that gets updated regularly with new features versus something that does not get updated anymore after some time has passed since the initial release.

Netgear seem to have at least one person on board that is proficient with today’s Internet. They have created a community website just for their new line of Open Source routers which perfectly catches the latest Internet trend: Social community.

The website contains blogs, a news sections, downloads, tutorials and a nicely populated forum that is slowly picking up pace. While the Netgear WGR614L Open Source Wireless-G Router is clearly aimed at Linux users Windows users can obviously use the router as well. It retails for a reasonable price of $69 and got mostly positive comments at Amazon and other online shops that sell it.

WiFi SiStr (Wi-Fi Signal Strength) displays and logs the signal strength of the wireless connection. This can be helpful if you want to find out why the wireless connection drops frequently or if you want to make sure that the signal strength is sufficient all the time.

The signal strength is displayed in real time and the statistics can be used to analyze a connection over time.

The application is compatible to Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 but incompatible to Windows Vista currently. The .net framework 1.1 is required to run the software.

The radar view seems to be the favorite way of displaying wireless networks for several applications of that kind. The main widget displays the radar view, the network adapter and information about a wireless hotspot if one has been selected from the radar. Those information include data rate, channel, SSID and signal strength.

The software monitors the surrounding area in real time and displays new wireless hotspots once they come into reach.

A detailed view is available as well which displays additional information such as default authentication mode, encryption, frequency, network mode and type. The software makes use of all wireless network adapters installed or connected to the computer system. Statistics and a glossary are available for additional information.

In case you are wondering, HandyWi is the application that can be installed on many Nokia mobile phones including the Nokia N78, Nokia N95 and the N93. A list of supported devices can be found at the developers homepage.

The process is pretty simple. The HandyWi software has to be installed on the mobile phone which will alert the user whenever a free WiFi spot has been discovered. The user can then connect to that spot and start using services like VOIP or Internet surfing for free.

This works pretty well in combination with Notebooks as well especially if your Notebook’s wireless card is not supported by the usual applications like Netstumbler or Easy WiFi Radar.

HandyWi features:

• Filtering of hotspots, separated view for public WLAN networks
• HandyWi clearly shows which access point is secure and which is not
• Single internet access point (HandyWi APN) for all applications (mail, web browser, char etc.)
• Easy account management, several user accounts possible (scratch card, prepaid etc.)
• Access to the location based media information, loaded each time you connect (works on selected WLAN networks only)
• Automatic hotspot discovery and alert feature
• Automatic connection to the hotspot which has stronger signal
• Secure RSA encrypted communication with HandyWi server
• Automatic application startup after install and on boot

HandyWi works pretty well and can be installed directly or by downloading it to the PC first.

WiFi is of course what makes this SD card stand out of the crowd. There has been some confusion on how this actually works out and I would like to explain the principle. The SD card can communicate with a computer or the Internet directly and upload pictures taken with the digital camera to those locations. This means that no computer is needed after the initial setup if you want to upload the pictures to sites on the Internet.

Many popular photo sharing and printing websites can be configured using a software that is supplied with the SD card. A USB memory card reader is included with every card which means that you can plug the card into a computer and manage it from there. (Login and password for those websites for instance are stored on the card)

Supported are 40/104/128-bit WEP encryption, WPA-PSK, and WPA2-PSK encryptions and works with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS X. Only jpg images can be uploaded directly, images saved in other formats are currently not supported by the Eye-Fi SD card.

The file javax.comm.properties has to be moved from the Wlandscape directory into the lib directory of the JRE installation of your computer. This can be found in the Program Files folder normally. After copying this library the run.bat file has to be edited to point to the correct installation of the Java Runtime Environment on your computer.

Finally Wlandscape can be started by double-clicking on the run.bat file. The best approach would be to search for Wlans by address. You can enter city, zip and street information and let Wlandscape search for hits. If more than one possibility is found it will ask the user to pick one result of the list.

What I like is that Wlandscape supports automated tracking by GPS and that Netstumbler information can be imported as well.

You have to setup your computer to look like a legit Access Point broadcasting the actual SSID of the service and you will have to fake a login page to resemble the login page of the service that you are emulating. The ethical hacker network describe everything with lots of screenshots. The most important part of the article is of course the way to defend against this fake Access Points.

It is highly difficulty for the normal user to validate an access point. You could check the AP settings if offered, for example the Authenticity Certificate of the Access Point and of the login website that you are visiting. Another way to prevent a MITM attack would be to utilize server host authentication, which prevents an attacker from being able to impersonate the access point because they do not have access to the AP’s private key.

1. Mac Filtering

Mac Filtering does not protect against the forgery of a mac address, which is terribly easy using a network sniffer. It still could be a valuable line of defense against neighbours and kids who are only able to push buttons and don´t understand the concept.

2. SSID Hiding

This is hiding SSID beaconing on the access point while four other mechanisms are able to broadcast the SSID.

3. LEAP Authentication

It relies on its users and their passwords. LEAP requires strong passwords to be relativly secure and we all know about the passwords of normal day users.

4. Disable DHCP

DHCP allows the automatic assignment of IP addresses. If you disable it you have to assign all IPs manually. It is not taking longer than 10 seconds to figure out the IP scheme of any network and assign the own IP address.

5. Antenna Placement

This is pretty useless as well, telling everyone to move their antenna in the midth of the room and running them with little power. The antenna of the access point is not the only factor that determines if it can be reached, the antenna of the client is also a factor. What if the hacker has a bigger antenna that still reaches your access point ?

6. Just use 802.11a or Bluetooth

This has nothing to do with security, those are just different standards.

My personal advice would be to avoid using something that you don´t know enough about. You should read at least the instructions which should help you setup a relative secure system but that´s of course not sufficient. You should do some research on the internet and articles like the one mentioned above help you understand the concepts and secure your wireless connection.

You could hope of course that nothing will go bad, that no one will get access to your computer, find out about your private files, share child pornography with it, download music from it aso. But I would not take any chances.

Back to the article: It lists Vulnerabilities and Attack Methods (Human Error, Rogue Access Points, Warchalking, MAC Address Spoofing, Noisy Neighbors, Improper Design and Man-In-The-Middle Attacks). You get a good basic understanding of those vulnerabilities and attack methods. This is of course no in depth knowledge but solid beginners knowledge. As always, if you want to know more you have to research.

After explaining the attack methods the article lists defense measures starting with basic defense methods. (WEP, MAC Address Blocking, Ditch the Defaults, Beacon Intervals, Access Lists, Controlling Reset and Disable DHCP)

The article gives a basic overview, you will have to find out how to setup your wireless router properly, that´s something the article won´t mention. Mainly because there are hundreds of different routers out there and it would be impossible to give configuration advices for all of them. Read the manual of your router and I suggest you visit the manufacturer homepage and see if there are updates for it available (firmware for instance). Maybe the manufacturer has a forum where users post their experience, this are always valuable sources for information.

The article examines the WPA protection in detail and demonstrates how it can be cracked. The first part gives a good overview of WPA and compares it to WPE. The second part goes into detail how WPA can be cracked.

But this is no article on how to protect yourself, I probably write one soon. The Ethical Hacker Network published an interesting article by Daniel V. Hoffman about essential wireless hacking tools. The article has four chapters: Finding Wireless Networks, Attaching to the Found Wireless Network, Sniffing Wireless Data and Protecting Against These Tools.

Daniel reviews some tools in each chapter always giving you more than one choice to try out and finally use the tool that suits you best.