Someone keeps cracking my wireless!

jimi_t2

Really not sure how this is happening. About 5 times in the last two months I've noticed strange names/MAC address on my Wireless client list. Obviously I change the password straight away but this is happening a little too much for comfort at this stage.

I'm using one of those new piano black Zyxel routers encrypted with WPA-PSK. How long from sniffing packets would it take for someone to crack it? I'm really at a loss here as I thought I was secure enough. User admin page for the router is encrypted as well so hopefully they haven't broken that... Any thoughts?

Knasher

AFAIK the WPA attacks are still dictionary based so the first obvious thing to do is to change your password and choose 20 random characters (letters of both cases, numbers and symbols). If your router can support it, you should also change to WPA2 and AES encryption. Finally if wouldn't hurt to enable the MAC address filter, its easy to get around if they know its there but there is always a chance they mightn't realise.

jimi_t2

Knasher wrote: »

AFAIK the WPA attacks are still dictionary based so the first obvious thing to do is to change your password and choose 20 random characters (letters of both cases, numbers and symbols). If your router can support it, you should also change to WPA2 and AES encryption. Finally if wouldn't hurt to enable the MAC address filter, its easy to get around if they know its there but there is always a chance they mightn't realise.

MAC address filter is going in ASAP. Does sniffing packets only apply to WEP ? It's been a while since I was remotely au fait with wireless security

There's a string of random numbers in there which I thought would make it that bit harder to crack... Can they glean any information off the router if they're connected; CC numbers or the like?

PogMoThoin

Use this md5 generator with a passphrase and copy and paste the resulting hash key
http://www.miraclesalad.com/webtools/md5.php

Improbable

As long as you have a very strong password, i.e. 20 characters, no regular words, random alphanumeric code, a dictionary based attack will not work on a WPA TKIP protocol. I don't know how much detail we're allowed to go into here so I'll err on the side of caution but the easiest method of cracking WPA security is only available when there is another machine already on the network. I would suggest changing your password often, make sure that the wireless is disabled before changing passwords, just in case. use mac address filtering, both for allowed access and specific denied mac addresses if your router supports it. In case he doesn't really know what he's doing you can just try picking a non standard SSID and turning off broadcast.

The forum FAQ also links to a decent wikipedia article about securing your network HERE

Genghiz Cohen

If someone is cracking your WEP key it might be worth considering thye might have had a poke around your computer too. Maybe a scan for keyloggers and such might be in order.