Security through Insecurity

Admit it. Even you, a savvy veteran e-mail user, have fallen for one or more of these Internet rumors. Or, even if you weren’t quite sure of the veracity of a particular story or photograph, you e-mailed it to your friends to amuse/warn them, or to see what they thought.

Don’t be embarrassed, you’re not alone. Despite our increasing technological sophistication, we seem to be as susceptible as ever to people determined to make suckers of us. After all, Internet hoaxes play on our human, not technical, vulnerabilities.

via 7 Fantastic Internet Hoaxes — E-mail — InformationWeek.

In the last Article, I showed you how to crack your own wireless network encrypted with WEP Encryption. In the video, you saw how easy it was to crack the network. And sad to say, this kind of attack affects most home users, and even many businesses. Fortunately for everyone, WEP Encryption is not the only security option available for wireless networks. WPA Encryption, is FAR more secure (For more information about WPA Encryption, go to WPA on Wikipedia.org). Virtually every router that is has WEP encryption, also has WPA and WPA2 encryption.

Since the Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router is extremely popular, I will be showing you how to secure your wireless network using WPA2 Encryption.

Linksys WRT54G Router

Open up your favorite browser of choice (mine happens to be Firefox),and and goto 192.168.1.1. This is the most common address for your router. You should be promted with a username and password dialog. Just try admin for both, unless you’ve changed it. If you don’t get a dialog box, or the page doesn’t come up, the address may be different. You can follow these directions to find out the address, but if you already found it, you can just skip ahead.

Lets find out your Routers IP address. The following instructions are for Windows.

1. Click the “Start” Button
2. Click on “Run”
3. Type in “cmd”
4. A console window should come up.
   Type in “ipconfig”
5. Look at “Default Gateway” Write down the address, it should be in the form of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
6. Now like before, go into your favorite Web Browser, and Put in the address.

You should now be at the Linksys Router Start Page. It should look very similiar to this:

Linksys Start Page

All the settings on this page should be fine already.

Lets click on the “Wireless” link at the top of the page.

Now click on the Wireless Security subsection at the top of the page.

Click on “Security Mode” and select “WPA2 Personal” as shown below

Linksys Wireless Security

From here we will choose a password. DO NOT use something common, ie.. names, places, numbers. Instead, use a combination. The best passwords, are long, and very random. Something like U71tR8zi89B is good. Passwords such as grandmother, San Diego, 123456, and password are horrible to use, and will usually be guessed with great speed.

That’s it! Save the settings by clicking on the “Save Settings” button at the bottom, and you will be good to go. Now just connect your computer to your WAP (Wireless Access Point) and put in the same password you did on the Wireless Security page. Note: It’s a good idea to memorize your passwords. You can also write them down, but make sure it is in a safe place, such as a safe.

Questions, Comments?

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Thanks!