Protecting Your Wireless Network

Three-dimensional image of Internet safety zone. Zip the Internet safety police car zooms into the picture. Car door opens and camera zooms in on laptop screen in car. Camera zooms in to white screen.

Internet 101

Surfing safely

Naviguez en sécurité

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Black text on white screen.

Protecting Your Wireless Network

Presented by Internet 101

Police and partners . . . working together to web-proof our communities.

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Image of trees, grass and water.

Music begins (plays throughout presentation).

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Woman’s voice (speaks throughout presentation): Wireless Internet capability is quickly growing in popularity. Soon, the Internet will be available everywhere you go.

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Whether you are sitting on a bus, or walking down the street, you will be able to access the Internet with a portable device.

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As a matter of fact, this technology is already available in some major North American cities. On a smaller scale, consumers are already using this technology in their own homes.

Drawing of computer appears on chalkboard, followed by drawing of wireless router for the Internet.

INTERNET

By using a wireless router, families are capable of sharing a single Internet connection for multiple computers throughout the house without any need for physical connections to modems.

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Setting up a wireless or a wi-fi environment certainly provides many advantages. But unfortunately, many people fail to properly configure their wireless devices.

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In order to make these wireless devices easy to set up and use by customers, manufacturers do not pre-configure the security features on these units.

Drawing of money symbol appears on chalkboard, followed by drawing of wireless router and computer.

Anyone can purchase a wireless router from their favorite computer store, install it and be surfing the Internet in no time.

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INTERNET

The problem is, without properly configuring security features on the router, the user is exposing his or her network to the entire neighbourhood.

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Failing to set the security features on a router is like putting a computer on your front lawn and making it accessible to everyone. Let’s take a look at the following demonstration.

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What you are seeing right now is a demonstration of the popularity of wireless networks and how many of them have not had the security features configured by the owners.

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In order to detect these networks, a laptop and a wireless adapter were taken on the road. Upon completing a short five kilometre drive, a total of 511 wireless networks were discovered.

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Of these, 201, or 39%, offered no protection whatsoever against intrusions.

Arrow opens Internet Explorer, types in URL and Google website appears.

Once the networks were identified, connecting to the Internet service used at that location through the unprotected network was child’s play.

Google website replace by Internet 101 website.

As you can see in this illustration, it was easy to connect to the Google website and then to the internet101.ca website.

Arrow clicks and opens another Internet 101 webpage.

Remember that a wireless router can easily have a range of more than 300 feet or 100 metres, thus making it easy to sit in a vehicle and connect to an unprotected network, unbeknownst to the network’s owner.

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INTERNET

You must be aware that anyone can easily connect to an open Internet connection and download illegal material such as child pornography, or conduct fraudulent business over the web using your Internet account.

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A subsequent police investigation would only show that the illegal activity came from your Internet account, and would expose you to a police investigation.

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It is imperative that anyone who intends to run a wireless Internet network realizes the importance of taking precautions to secure it from unauthorized access.

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If you are unable to properly set up the security features of a wireless environment on your own, you should definitely seek the assistance of a technologically savvy person.

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What follows is a brief overview of what a person should pay particular attention to when setting up a wireless environment in his or her own home.

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This is by no means a complete listing of the precautions that may be taken, but it certainly is a good start.

Drawing of computer appears beside router, and animated drawing of airwaves begins flashing from router to computer.

By definition, a wireless router is a device that transfers data through airwaves to computers, which are connected to it.

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The lack of wires translates to easy access to the home network by anyone within the limited range of the wireless router.

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When you purchase a wireless router, a CD that contains the necessary software or coded instructions is included. This CD will enable you to properly configure and use the device.

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1. Change the default wireless router settings

2. Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router

3. Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network

4. Make your wireless router invisible

Here are the basic points that should be addressed in order to secure your wireless environment:

1. Change the default wireless router settings.

2. Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router.

3. Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network.

4. Make your wireless router invisible.

Checkmarks disappear except for one beside first line of text. Chalkboard fades to image of wireless router installation software.

1. Change the default wireless router settings

2. Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router

3. Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network

4. Make your wireless router invisible

Change the default wireless router settings. Every manufacturer ships their wireless router with a default username and password. Lists of these usernames and passwords are freely available over the Internet.

If you fail to change these usernames and passwords, you are leaving your wireless router wide open for any stranger within range to come and modify your settings including any security features you might have already set.

Fades to image of chalkboard with checkmarks beside first two lines of text. Fades to image of another chalkboard with drawing of wireless router with airwaves going to drawing of computer. Drawing of second computer appears between router and first computer.

1. Change the default wireless router settings

2. Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router

3. Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network

4. Make your wireless router invisible

Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router. There is software available over the Internet that will enable someone within range of your wireless network to capture the data transmitted back and forth between your computer and your router.

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This becomes particularly important if you do online banking or you make some purchases with your credit card over the Internet.

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The software included with your wireless router will allow you to encrypt or systematically scramble information so that it cannot be read without knowing the coding key.

In most instances your software will give you the option to use either WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) or WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). It’s always best to use WAP as it is more secure than WEP.

Once you have selected the type of encryption you want to use, you will also need to create a pass phrase in order to secure this protocol.

It is then necessary to configure any computer that will need to connect to the wireless router with the exact same values.

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1. Change the default wireless router settings

2. Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router

3. Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network

4. Make your wireless router invisible

Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network. At the wireless router level, you can also decide to whom you will grant access.

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This is done using MAC addresses. A MAC address, short for Media Access Control address, is a unique code assigned to most forms of networking hardware.

A MAC Address looks like this: 00-70-97-92-60-EX. In order to find out what your computer’s MAC address is, you will need to go to the command prompt.

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First, left click on the Start button, left click on Run and type in the letters “c m d”. This will bring you to a command prompt.

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ipconfig/all

At the flashing cursor type in either “w i n i p c f g” or “i p c o n f i g / a l l” and hit the Enter key. The required command is dictated by your computer’s operating system.

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Some information about your computer should then be revealed. Look for the line that says Physical Address and note on a piece of paper the MAC address listed next to it.

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You will then need to find, in your router’s software, the area where you can perform MAC filtering.

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By default, your router does not filter MAC addresses; you will need to enter the newly found values of the computer to which you want to grant access.

Click on Add and the information will be populated into your router’s configuration.

It is important that the very first computer to which you grant access is the one that you are actually using to access your router’s software.

Otherwise, you risk locking yourself out of the router and will not be able to access it again without resetting the factory settings.

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1. Change the default wireless router settings

2. Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router

3. Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network

4. Make your wireless router invisible

Make your wireless router invisible. You should change the SSID to a different name. SSID is an acronym for Service Set Identifier.

Simply put, this is a name which identifies your network. By leaving it to its default value, it is possible for others to identify exactly what type of wireless router you are using.

And, as mentioned previously, it then becomes easy to determine what the default factory username and password is.

Line of letters and numbers on screen replaced by SS Enterprise.

SS Enterprise

The SSID can be any name you want. If you want to call your network SS Enterprise for instance, you can do so.

It is simply important to change it to a different value than the factory setting.

Then, anyone scouting the neighborhood for non-secure network access will see a network named SS Enterprise, your network.

If you have applied the safety tips mentioned previously, no one will be able to get inside your wireless network.

To further reduce the temptation of anyone trying to access without your authorization, you may also disable the SSID Broadcast option.

This will prevent your wireless router from advertising itself as being available to the outside world. It suddenly becomes invisible to passers-by.

Since all the computers within your home are already configured to be aware of your router’s existence, they will not need to look for it, instead, they will directly connect to it.

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1. Change the default wireless router settings

2. Encrypt the data transmitted to and back from the router

3. Allow only selected computers to connect to your wireless network

4. Make your wireless router invisible

As mentioned earlier, this is by no means an exhaustive list of security precautions to be taken; they are merely some very basic rules to abide by.

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It is important to note that if you are not technologically savvy, securing your network is worth seeking the assistance of your favorite computer guru.

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Remember that a very determined and experienced person could gain access to your network regardless of what safety measures are in place.

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However, considering that nearly 40% of wireless networks in use right now are unprotected, chances are that those with criminal intent will opt for the path of least resistance, that is, the unprotected networks.

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Text and Original Concept

Robert Bisson

Narration

Monique Beauchamp

With assistance from

Yvon Brault

Dana Townsend

Daniel Mulligan

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CyberWise.ca

MPF - FPM

Canada’s SchoolNet

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Lafbros Multimedia

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