Unsecured Wireless Networks
This section describes Unsecured Wireless Networks.Description
A network is defined as a group of computers connected to other, allowing the computers that are connected to each other to communicate with each other to share resources. A wireless network is essentially the same thing, except the medium in which the connection is made between computers is done without wires.
Unsecured, means there is a lack of a promise of security. So as it sounds, unsecured wireless networks are wireless networks with a lack of a promise of security. There may exist a connection between your computer and another computer, but the data being sent between computers or even the connection itself may not be secure. Typical uninformed consumers will not know the difference between unsecured and secured networks, and assume everything is good right out of the box. Without the proper setup, an unsecured access point becomes a gateway for intruders to hop onto.
Why Secure a Network?
The very minimum that one could take advantage of an unsecured wireless network is simply leeching the bandwidth from the wireless connection. Doing this could easily slow down the network and internet speed for the vicitm. Not only this, but consider if the victim had metered bandwidth – imagine how much surcharges the victim would have to pay for if the leecher had used more bandwidth than the victim pays for.
Unauthorized users can hop onto an unsecured wireless network, and perform a number of malicious things without being ‘known’. This means, if they did anything that could be illegal, and got caught – it would appear that the owner of the connection was at fault. For example, the intruder could use your network to download a large amount of pirated music, video, games, or software. Or, the intruder could access illegal content such as child pornography, or confidential data from government networks. In any scenario, if the traffic was traced back to the victim’s connection, the victim would then be responsible for it.
Suppose you have confidential data on your computer’s hard disk. If the computer were on an unsecured wireless network, the confidential data potentially becomes unconfidential. All it takes is a series of attacks to get into your hard disk and manipulate whatever data you have, whether it be making copies or deleting them. How would you go about looking into another person’s hard disk’s contents anyway? Well, it’s illegal for anyone to access another person’s network without authorization, but for argumentation purposes - in Microsoft Windows XP, there’s the My Network Places (Network Neighborhood in earlier versions). Any computers connected to the network are readily visible here. From here, you could view any shared folders and/or files on their disk, and then further manipulate those files. If the victim had confidential information stored in a shared folder, the intruder could obtain it without the him knowing. The intruder could even use packet sniffers to analyze the victim’s data for login information for various things, to access their e-mail, servers, etc.
More advanced intruders may use the ‘net view’ command on the command line to view connected computers on the unsecured wireless network from there. If the network is unsecured, then it is likely that the Administrative Shares functionality of Windows is enabled and passwords are probably not used – this makes the assumption that the user is a Windows user and is ignorant to security. The intruder can then utilize the Administrative Shares functionality of Windows, to authenticate themselves as the computer admin, and access any portion of the hard drive, by using the ‘net use * \\remotecomputername\c$’ (command where remotcomputername is the name of the computer on the network).
Who Can Access an Unsecured Wireless Network?
Wireless networks are made to be quick and easy to access so that you don’t need complicated setups. But because they are quick and easy to access, anyone who has a device that can pick up Wifi signals can access it. However, This means your next door neighbor, the guy aross your backyard, the guy down the road, the people from two buildings over, etc. It all depends on the range of your wireless router’s signals.
How to Secure a Wireless Network?
There are various ways you can go about securing your wireless network. Most people have access points like wireless routers, and don’t even bother with security features present on them. Most routers allow some form of access control, such as:
- SSID Broadcast Hiding
- MAC Address Filtering
- Firewall
- WEP Encryption
- WPA Encryption
- WPA2 Encryption
Refer to your router’s manual or simply visit the manufacturer’s website and look for support on how to set up these controls. Using a combination of access point controls are a good way to secure your wireless network and prevent it from being abused.