In settings I’ve noticed that I am using WPA-PSK. I’ve just noticed someone’s post on the web about setting up wireless broadband in his house and someone commented on making sure its WPA2 – personal.

In the drop down menu in the routers properties I have found:

Network Authentication with a drop down list of:

shared
open
wpa
wpa psk
wpa2
wpa2 psk

Should I be changing this at all?

TIA folks.

That would be WPA2-PSK, are you in danger of hackers breaking the WPA encryption to steal all of your data? Download heaps of bad things using your connection?

I heard it doesn’t take that much longer to break WPA2 as it did to break WPA….(edit so I have read)

Length of password is far more important.
WPA is fine with a long password. WPA2 is much better, with a long password. Not worth trying to crack.

WPA has a vulnerability in which makes it possible to accelerate cracking with some specific techniques. It’s not the same gaping hole that allows WEP to be cracked in minutes but it’s similar.

Set a password of ten characters or more and no-one will break in. Preferably choose something that’s not a dictionary word because that’ll be someone’s first line of attack.

http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=cracking_wpa
Some more reading if your interested.

Are you really that worried that someone is going to hack into your home wifi?

Yes, then follow Samuri’s advice.

No, then don’t worry as long as it’s has a reasonable protection to stop neighbours hogging your bandwidth.

Here’s a good explanation of the differences between WPA and WPA2 and why WPA2 is more secure.

http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-wpa-and-wpa2/

As I say though, in reality if I see WPA and I suspect the key is longer than 8 characters then I know my only real chance of cracking in a timely manner is a dictionary attack.

You could hide the SSID too, not that would stop hackers. Would stop leeching though.

being pragmatic I have had WEP passwords that are as simple as acbdef…etc. when I lived in places that to access the wifi you would have to be in the house or within the garden living far enough away from people for it not to be a problem. It was more useful to be able to give someone the password easily.

Now I’m not overly bothered as I can see the limit of the range and it’s not where people can just sit and pop open a laptop. I’m also aware of the tools available to open up networks and give people access.

And also wireless clients that don’t need to be close by. All I’ve got is a cheapo USB client from ebay, about £25 i think. That can see access points half a mile away. My old boss had a directional antenna he bought for about £100 which could see and communicate with AP’s well over a mile away. He lent it me once, I did a scan at home and found around 200 AP’s.

In that instance a hacker would select the low hanging fruit, probably start attacking the WEP AP’s while letting the WPA brute forcing run on a different machine the background. You only need to capture one hash from each AP to run your offline cracking.

Note that a hacker is almost certainly not interested in stealing your bandwidth. They’ll be after two things.
1. Breaking into machines on your network without fear of capture
2. Using your connection to attack other, higher profile targets without fear of capture

Sorry folks for not replying. Thanks for the info, I’ll read it tomorrow.

Drac – Moderator
Are you really that worried that someone is going to hack into your home wifi?

Well the lodger next building to here is very close by and to cut a long story short, he’s a bit too quiet for my liking and has broken a lock on a padlocked gas meter to continuosly use the same £1 coin until he was found out. Don’t ask why he’s still here, but I often have a mare watching video clips at all hours of the day (could just be the way it is,not sure) and often wonder if folk could be using the connection. I really am clueless with computers, all I can see is that I’m on a security enabled wireless network/wpa but not sure how to tell if someone else was using it. I’ve only got windows firewall running and nothing else.

when you go to your router settings look to see who is connected, it will normally be under DHCP client list or something like that, it will tell you all the devices currently/recently using your connection.

also quick check is when it’s going slow, change you password and see if it speeds up 🙂

Thank you! Just heading out but I’ll look at it when I get home.