Just found an open Wireless Network am I at any risk from using it?

[Kid_Eternity]

Thanks for the reply Groke. I have now disabled "Allow Broadcast of Name (SSID)".

There are three security options:

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)
WPA-802.1x

I currently have WEP enabled, is this best?

Thanks, and sorry to hijack the thread.

WEP is the weakest but your DS might have trouble with the other ones...

 

[The Groke]

WEP is the weakest but your DS might have trouble with the other ones...

Yeah granted, if you do have a DS, it will only work with WEP....

 

[The Groke]

Thanks for the advice.

Any time matey.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Yeah granted, if you do have a DS, it will only work with WEP....

Yep, it was great fun having to pay £27 to get my DS online, nice one Nintendo!

 

[The Groke]

Yep, it was great fun having to pay £27 to get my DS online, nice one Nintendo!

I haven't bothered yet......

THough I do have Mario Kart and Animal Crossing now....

It doesn't have built in wireless right? you have to buy that huge USB stick?

 

[mwgdrwg]

I haven't bothered yet......

THough I do have Mario Kart and Animal Crossing now....

It doesn't have built in wireless right? you have to buy that huge USB stick?

No, if you have access to a wi-fi you're sorted. No need to buy anything else.

 

[lunatrick]

wireless opens a whole can of worms really - surely the devious / criminal element would use somebody else's connection to do their deeds? makes me wonder how airports etc where it's just open access handle this aspect....

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

wireless opens a whole can of worms really - surely the devious / criminal element would use somebody else's connection to do their deeds? makes me wonder how airports etc where it's just open access handle this aspect....

Airports and Wireless Access Points in cafes are very easy to administrate as access (usually) requires a credit card. However, what is to stop an attacker in a wireless environment running sniffing tools to get information from the other people using the connection?

Using some very common tools (tcp dump, dsniff, ethereal - there's loads) anyone can grab the information from the other computers on the network unless
this info is going via secure tunnels. Anyone who has a work laptop will (hopefully?) have an office VPN connection, using a solution such as checkpoint, this encrypts the traffic between your client and the trusted network back at the office. This way they can keep their data secure and the monkey boys in suits working all the time.
Personally I wouldn't use wireless unless I was safe in the knowledge it was secure. Eg. I owned it. Or my mum did. Cos then I would have set it up innit.