retired17 Premium Member join:2007-01-24 Anaheim, CA |
retired17
Premium Member
2014-Jul-24 10:55 am
Do I still need to use WEP/WPA?My wireless router is password protected and I use MAC filtering. Do I need to use WEP/WPA encryption if the sites I go to has HTTPS: in their URL? |
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aguen Premium Member join:2003-07-16 Grants Pass, OR
3 recommendations |
aguen
Premium Member
2014-Jul-24 12:22 pm
The WEP/WPA security isn't related to what/where you and your PC's on your network travel on the internet. It is all about protecting your internal network from people using your wifi router as their on ramp to the internet which in turn makes you vulnerable/liable to whatever potentially illegal activities they may get up to on the internet.
WEP security was broken years ago, MAC filtering can work in a small way but is not fool proof. If your current router and wireless nic cards do not support WPA2, then use WPA with a good security string but you should look to upgrading your hardware to support WPA2. |
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1 recommendation |
to retired17
2nd aguen entirely... Regards |
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1 recommendation |
3rd. For the love of science use WPA2 with AES. Its more secure and in some cases better performance wise, since its hardware and not client based. |
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SeleniaGentoo Convert Premium Member join:2006-09-22 Fort Smith, AR
1 recommendation |
to retired17
MAC filtering=shit. It is like putting paper in front of your doorway and asking theives kindly not to walk through and tear the paper. Offers no security as the MAC addresses needed to spoof, which most laptops can do, are broadcast in plain text over the air to any client listening. WEP is more like a door with a flimsy lock. Cracked by pretty old open source automated tools in a few minutes. WPA/TKIP is more difficult, but still pretty breakable, in a matter of hours vs minutes for WEP. WPA2/AES is very difficult to break and would require concurrent super computers working on it to crack in any reasonable amount of time. It does become very inconvenient with WPA/TKIP or above such as most people, even knowledgeable, won't bother. Just make sure you don't leave WPS on, which provides a backdoor that even makes WPA2/AES easy to crack, at least at close range, with Reaver. That being said, I do run a separate open AP from my network, with many potential illegal uses locked down by keywords and ports. Chances of yours being used for a bunch of illegal activity is small but I still like to protect myself to a decent extent. Your bigger worry is somebody nosy mucking with or exploiting your local network services, since they would be on your network, for which most firewalls in default state trust your local network. |
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