Welcome to our community

How good is the security for wireless communications these days.

I was told last week that it was very good, but what is good?

I know there are a lot of wizards out there and I would value their opinion.

Cheers

Hello Oscar

Getting direct access to any network whether wireless or cable does have a security risk. So from an access point of view wireless has the greater potential to be hacked.

Authentication onto a wireless network can be open or a shared key. An open system is as the name suggests is completely open to anyone who can identify the Service Set Identifier (SSID) and therefore is not secure. Shared key authentification requires the user to have either a 64 bit or 128 bit WEP key to get authentificated.

The bottom line is that WLANs are definitely not hack proof but are more secure than a cable based LAN if the hacker can get a direct connection onto the cable.

Unless you are trying to protect very sensitive information you should be pretty safe using an 128 bit shared key.

I hope this helps.

Thank's Dogbert.

There are some issues to this... At this time there are programs that are able to crack your WEP key. Someone near your accesspoint can hack intoyour network using his laptop to generate multiple keys to find the right one. More secure is it to use WPA. This protocol uses your shared key (needs to be the same on host as well as on client) only once. After the connection is established it wil change its key mutiple times. So, this method is more secure. Even more secure is WPA-PSK.
See also on:
http://www.openxtra.co.uk/articles/wpa-vs-wep.php
a lot of info can be found at:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/

Best Regards..Have Fun!!

Bert
Useful links. The conclusion seems to be that a 128 bit WEP key is better than no security at all. It will offer some protection but it will not keep out anyone who is determined to gain access. From what I have read WEP keys offer about the same level of security as Microsoft passwords (They can be hacked in a few hours with the right tools)