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Mar
SANS and Wireless Ethical Hacking
I have been at SANS all week in Orlando increasing my wireless knowledge. Rather than simply learning about the protocol and a high-level view of some of the threats, we have dived in deep about the threats. And it helps that my instructor, Joshua Wright, has exposed several of those threats. I have learned a tremendous amount, and there are still two days left.
Wireless certainly has some vulnerabilities, especially with some of the old “security” including WEP, TKIP, open networks, Hotspots, etc. However, CCMP-AES provides us with some pretty good security if you follow some basic steps. What are some of those steps? This information can certainly be found elsewhere and even more in depth, but here are a few pointers for the home user.
- Change the SSID from the default. This limits some of the advantages an attacker has.
- Change the password for the admin page on your router/access point.
- Pick a Preshared Key (PSK) that is at least 20 characters in length and use some special characters, numbers, upper and lower case characters. At this point cracking the PSK becomes a process that takes longer that the attacker has (years, at least). If you use a short passphrase without any of these complexities, the PSK can be cracked fairly quickly.
- Use only WPA2-CCMP/AES. TKIP has some vulnerabilities that have been exposed and attackers are really looking for other ways to exploit it. There are some ways to protect yourself currently if you are still using TKIP, but it is time to move away. This was only intended as a security measure to allow a software update of cards/APs that only supported WEP. It was only meant to be used for five years, and that time has come and gone. If your hardware supports WPA2-CCMP/AES, use it! If your hardware doesn’t, maybe it is time to buy some new hardware. As Mr. Wright said, “TKIP is the new WEP.” Attackers will continue to find new ways to attack it.
- Limit the power of your access point. If your AP has the ability to adjust the power, play around with this setting. Change it to a lower power setting and see if you can still get service in all the places you need it. This will not only provide some security, it will also provide a performance benefit due to the properties of 802.11.
- Protect your client machines. Make sure you are using a firewall, antivirus, and keep your computers patched. This includes updating your network card drivers. Vulnerabilities are exploited in the network card drivers as well as software which can make your computer vulnerable as well. Check for updates.
That’s it for now. I just wanted to give a few tips the everyday home user can use. Take a few minutes, and if you are not doing these, do them. It will provide you a tremendous amount more protection than simply using the AP/router straight out of the box.
