[Chester LUG] WiFi Terror

[Les Pritchard]

You've hit the nail on the head there security vs convenience. I have been
to so many companies who use WEP because they know it will work with all
devices. They also use a simple key as something longer is just harder to
type :-)

I've also spoken to home users who use WEP, or nothing at all as they've had
problems connecting consoles to WPA2. Very scary.

On 13 July 2011 16:24, Michael Crilly <mrcrilly at gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe WPA is backwards compatible with WEP enabled hardware (but not
> WPA2 as the chipsets can't do the processing). WPA is an improvement over
> WEP as it uses better encryption, it doesn't directly use master keys and
> it's IV has been increased to 48, from 24, and as such you have trillions of
> key combinations, instead of about 17 million. WPA2 requires completely new
> hardware.
>
> I think ISPs should be taking on the responsibility of ensuring people's
> security, as far as wireless technology at home goes, anyway. This can be
> done by shipping wireless routers with only WPA2 enabled, minimum key
> requirements and a decent password policy on the router's administration
> panel, etc. That being said it can't be too easy as you end up sacrificing
> security for convenience, which is never good.
>
>
> On 13/07/11 16:15, Bryn Salisbury wrote:
>
>> The question for me is whether or not older units in circulation have been
>> updated to support WPA2. I know that there are still a load of 1st
>> generation BT Home Hubs out there which still work on WEP, and the other
>> question is how often people update their wifi passwords (I bet most
>> provider-issued devices are still set to their factory WEP/WPA2 keys).
>>
>> Buzz Out Loud did a long segment about Wifi routers a few weeks ago, and
>> my recent (painful) experience trying to reconfigure my own HomeHub made me
>> wonder how many 'normal' people actually look (or even know they should
>> look) at such things?
>>
>> B
>>
>> On 13 Jul 2011, at 16:10, Michael Crilly wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Mind you most residential gateways come with WPA2 as standard now (the
>>> article was a few years back), so hopefully this will not be as easy to do.
>>>
>>> On 13/07/11 16:08, Les Pritchard wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Yes that's a great story, there's a lot of this going on sadly. If
>>>> you've upset anyone - don't use WiFi :-)
>>>>
>>>> On 13 July 2011 15:23, Michael Crilly<mrcrilly at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>> I've just started reading this on Arstechnica:
>>>> http://arstechnica.com/tech-**policy/news/2011/07/wifi-**
>>>> hacking-neighbor-from-hell-**gets-18-years-in-prison.ars<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/wifi-hacking-neighbor-from-hell-gets-18-years-in-prison.ars>- quite scary! It just goes to show you what you can do with some tools off
>>>> of the Internet and some basic knowledge.
>>>>
>>>> This could be a story for your company's website, Les ;-)
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>> --
>> Bryn Salisbury
>> http://about.me/bryns/bio
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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