Whats Are The Best Ways To Find Out If Someone Is Pilfering Your Wireless???

IT Loser

As my name suggests, I don't know much of these things.

I have taken all of the precautions which someone of my limited knowledge can be expected to take, I have got rid of the Eircom SSID off my router and replaced it with a name of my own making. I have also re-engineered the WEP key so that anyone who had hacked into my WEP before I managed to disable the Eircom SSID would find it useless.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to manage the WPA at all.

I use the 192.168 etc thing to see who is on my LAN from time to time, and the only names I ever see are those of myself and my father, who uses the ethernet directly from the modem downstairs.

So, in short, how do I determine IF anyone is lurking around my WEP, if they have hacked it, if they are stealing bandwidth, sniffing packets, or even trying to get in?

Also, do you think it is safe conducting my ebay/paypal transactions over a wireless connection?

Many thanks.:cool:
IT Loser.

Spear

IT Loser wrote: »

As my name suggests, I don't know much of these things.

I have taken all of the precautions which someone of my limited knowledge can be expected to take, I have got rid of the Eircom SSID off my router and replaced it with a name of my own making. I have also re-engineered the WEP key so that anyone who had hacked into my WEP before I managed to disable the Eircom SSID would find it useless.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to manage the WPA at all.

I use the 192.168 etc thing to see who is on my LAN from time to time, and the only names I ever see are those of myself and my father, who uses the ethernet directly from the modem downstairs.

So, in short, how do I determine IF anyone is lurking around my WEP, if they have hacked it, if they are stealing bandwidth, sniffing packets, or even trying to get in?

Also, do you think it is safe conducting my ebay/paypal transactions over a wireless connection?

Many thanks.:cool:
IT Loser.

WEP is still easily broken, so it's worth making the change to WPA. Connected clients should have their MAC address appear on the routers list of wireless clients.

If someone is sniffing the wireless packets, you've no way of knowing since they don't need to connect or interact with your router to receive them.

Hero Of College

Spear wrote: »

WEP is still easily broken, so it's worth making the change to WPA. Connected clients should have their MAC address appear on the routers list of wireless clients.

If someone is sniffing the wireless packets, you've no way of knowing since they don't need to connect or interact with your router to receive them.

Okay then, so how do I change over to WEP??

Realistically speaking, what is the chance of pulling credit card details out of the air, so to speak??

Thanks.;):cool:

Spear

Hero Of College wrote: »

Okay then, so how do I change over to WEP??

Realistically speaking, what is the chance of pulling credit card details out of the air, so to speak??

Thanks.;):cool:

Eircom claim to have instructions here
http://broadbandsupport.eircom.net/bbkblink.asp?case=enhancewirelesssecurity
but the page keeps loading forever.

DeepBlue

IT Loser wrote: »

Unfortunately, I don't know how to manage the WPA at all.

Have you tried following these instructions?

FruitLover

IT Loser wrote: »

Also, do you think it is safe conducting my ebay/paypal transactions over a wireless connection?

Hero Of College wrote: »

Realistically speaking, what is the chance of pulling credit card details out of the air, so to speak??

You're relatively safe if you make sure you're using an SSL/TLS-encrypted session (check for the padlock icon and watch out for the browser prompting you of any problems with the cert), assuming your OS itself hasn't been compromised. Use a personal firewall, anti-virus software if you're on Windows, and a non-administrative user account to mitigate that risk.

Lazarus2.0

You could also filter by MAC address - any PC/device that connects to the router has a unique MAC address (on each PC you can find this by running command and typing ipconfig/all and noting the physical address of the machine ) . You should be able to permit only these addresses to access the router within your router settings , usually under MAC Filtering or similar .

As Spear has said , WPA and MAC Filtering should make your network pretty safe - it wont make the network 100% secure (I dont believe any network is 100% secure) but there'll be easier pickings for hackers so you'd probably be left alone ...

bealbocht

you should look for wpa -psk ( or wpa personal, ) not as secure but much easier to set up. (although does slow wifi down a bit)

On my router , it only showed two users(both me) on the opening page, but when I went to "Status" , I could see extra unknow IPs in the wireless status option. (trendnet tew-432)

Now have , IP filtering, hidden SSID, and have been changing the passphrase regularly, and very open to addtion security measures, if anybody has any , seems to be holding.. but can also see regular "SYN Flood Attack Detect" in the log. (which I posted a thread on, but, suggestions on stopping them if possible , would be welcome)

Martyr

not all people using someone elses router release the leased ip from the dhcp server, for that reason, its still "in use" even after the leecher disconnects.
another way is to identify "probes" by a leecher..there are ways.