Wi-Fi Security

Securing your home network

What is Wi-Fi?

IEEE 802.11 or Wi-Fi denotes a set of wireless standards developed by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee. Trivia name comes from working group 11 of the IEEE. Wi-Fi uses radio frequency (RF) to establish a network connection. 802.11b and 802.11g standards use the 2.4 GHz band. 802.11b and 802.11g equipment can incur interference from microwave ovens, cordless phones, and other appliances using the same 2.4 GHz band.

Wi-Fi Speeds

802.11

1 and 2 Mbps

802.11a
802.11b

20 Mbps
11 Mbps, will scale back to 5.5, 2, 1

802.11e

Super G 108Mbps

Does it really matter for Internet?

How it transmits

Ethernet uses CSMA/CD

carrier sense multiple access with collision detection

Ethernet waits to see if the wire is idle, then sends. If a collision is detected, it resends. Wi-FI uses carrier sense multiple access protocol with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). The base station polls nodes to see if they have anything to send much overhead in controlling transmission. The protocol itself is different than Ethernet, hence performance and reliability differ.

Why Secure your Wi-Fi?

Why secure it?

Banking and sensitive information. Identity theft. Wireless cracking of your home PCs. Basic privacy. Prevent sharing of your Internet connection.

How easy is it to snif unsecured Wi-Fi? Very, very easy use a wireless protocol analyzer to see all information.

Securing your Wi-Fi

Use WEP or WPA to encrypt data.

Wired Equivalency Privacy Wi-Fi Protected Access

Can be cracked, but difficult. WPA is stronger. Both work at Layer 2. WEP is analogous to locking your front door handle, whereas WPA is installing a good bolt lock. (Neither will deter a

sufficiently motivated intruder!)

WPA2 provides government grade security by implementing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) FIPS 140-2 compliant AES encryption algorithm.

What's wrong with WEP?

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/1368661 WEP has been part of the 802.11 standard since initial ratification in September 1999. At that time, the 802.11 committee was aware of some WEP limitations; however, WEP was the best choice to ensure efficient implementations worldwide. Nevertheless, WEP has undergone much scrutiny and criticism over the past couple years. WEP is vulnerable because of relatively short IVs and keys that remain static. The issues with WEP don't really have much to do with the RC4 encryption algorithm. With only 24 bits, WEP eventually uses the same IV for different data packets. For a large busy network, this reoccurrence of IVs can happen within an hour or so. This results in the transmission of frames having keystreams that are too similar. If a hacker collects enough frames based on the same IV, the individual can determine the shared values among them, i.e., the keystream or the shared secret key. This of course leads to the hacker decrypting any of the 802.11 frames.

Securing your Wi-Fi

Use WPA or WEP for encryption.

Use a MAC address filter. (Questionable)

Change the default password on your router.

Change your SSID or network name to something that doesnt identify you personally.
Secure the files on your PCs by using good passwords, etc. Nothing will deter a sufficiently motivated cracker or intruder. Keep in mind that nothing is 100% secure!

Lets secure our Wi-Fi!

Demo!