Those darned WiFi pirates!

[quislet]

Found a good article about the dangers of WiFi piracy in my mailbox today:

http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,103774,00.html?source=NLT_MW2&nid=103774

Those of you up in the St. Petersburg area should be especially careful, as that's the location of the first US arrest for WiFi piracy! ;)

It'll be interesting to see where this all goes. It's been so wide-open for so long, and now it will probably get regulated to death. Very hard to enforce such laws, though.

Comments

[skiafoxmorgan.livejournal.com]

well, for me, the stupid computer person on the street, it's scary to hear that they can do things to MY computer via the open network. I really need to secure it. My computer is my livelihood at this point.

[quislet.livejournal.com]

You have modern equipment (802.11g - I checked last time I was there), so you have great options for security. Like the article says, there are two ways to protect yourself.

The first is encryption. You want to enable WPA (found in the security tab on the web page for your access point and in your wireless card settings). Set your encryption to something with a big number (probably 128 bit) and pick a code. Put the same number and code on both ends and your wireless traffic is now hidden from prying eyes.

The second is controlling access to your network. Probably the most effective thing to do here is set up MAC filtering. This is a little more complicated, but is also on the security tab on the web page for your access point. Basically, you read the MAC address off the label on your wireless card and type it into the appropriate field on the web page. This will prevent any other wireless cards from using your network.

I know that's a lot of arcane stuff, and I'd be happy to take a look the next time I'm in town, but it should be a good start if you're feeling adventurous. ;)