[BBLISA] Wired to wireless?

[Tal Cohen]

You seem to have 2 questions here. First, is the uplink secure, and second, how to secure WiFi.



Re #1, not sure, but I do know that one time I was mucking with internal route statements (internal to my LAN) and inadvertently was able to ping an upstream router on a 10.x.x.x network.



Re #2, WiFi: It is worth noting that since WiFi broadcasts a signal, there is inherently less security around it when compared against a wired network. With that said, there are steps you can take to mitigate the open nature of WiFi networks:

*         Make sure to setup the strongest level of encryption available on your WiFi device and use a strong non-dictionary word password (use a password generator that spits out gibberish but that will include uppercase, lowercase, symbols, and numbers)

*         Do not broadcast the SSID

*         Use access control to limit who can connect to your WiFi device

*         Change the default password on all of your devices  including the WiFi devices (this is just good security)

*         Monitor the logs on the WiFi devices (routers). Most let you direct logs to a Syslog server. Do it, then periodically monitor the syslog entries.

*         You should also check out the NSA's website. They have guidelines on how to secure devices including PC's, MACs, and WiFi routers.



Hope this helps,



Tal



-----Original Message-----
From: bblisa-bounces at bblisa.org [mailto:bblisa-bounces at bblisa.org] On Behalf Of Scott Ehrlich
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 6:46 AM
To: bblisa at bblisa.org
Subject: [BBLISA] Wired to wireless?



A question for the comm techies out there -



You have a wired network via a major provider - comcast, verizon, rcn,

etc, at your home.



Your neighbor (someone on your street) also subscribes to the same

provider.   Can they see your traffic?    Can you see theirs?



I ask because I just don't trust wifi enough for home use.   I am

wondering, though, how far my information goes when it leaves my cable

modem?    How do the providers handle it - or is it under DOCSIS

rules?



If my data is isolated from me to the headend, protected from the

neighbors or anyone else on the network, then I would feel a bit

better.



Thanks for any good educational insight on this.   Depending on the

answer, it _might_ help sway me to consider wifi at home.



Scott



_______________________________________________

bblisa mailing list

bblisa at bblisa.org

http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.bblisa.org/pipermail/bblisa/attachments/20100503/2457cf15/attachment.htm