Your Guide To Wireless

Five Simple, Free Security Hacks

security software is the lock on your PC’s front door, but you can also make that door less attractive to crooks. Let’s talk about security hacks, simple yet clever ways to protect yourself and your PC that cost little or nothing. Here are my fve favorites. It should go without saying that none of these can replace good, up-to-date antivirus and firewall protection, but they can make stealing your system or data difficult or unappealing. It’s simple, yet surprisingly effective: Remove the...

Guard Your Network With a Free Firewall

If you ever find yourself in need of a decently robust and full-featured firewall but your budget is approaching zero, I have just the solution for you. SmoothWall Express 3.0 is an open-source, security-hardened GNU/Linux firewall. With minimal hardware requirements and a small footprint, it should work with nearly any Pentium-class PC that has at least 128MB of RAM and a hard disk of 2GB or greater. You should have at least two network cards installed or basic use, three or more if you want ...

WPA Wi-Fi Encryption Cracked for the First Time

Once thought safe, the WPA standard used by countless wireless routers has been revealed to be vulnerable- but only in theory, for now. Security researchers say they've developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard that is used to safeguard data on many wireless networks. Researcher Erik Tews was to demonstrate the attack at the PacSec conference in Tokyo in mid-November. Cracking WPA encryption could be exploited to read data being sent from a rou...

Free Security Software for Your Systems

EULAlyzer Wonder what you're agreeing to when you click I Accept? Don't worry; just drag EULAlyzer's target icon onto the EULA for a quick report on any troublesome language. Hotspot Shield Create an instant virtual private network (VPN) tunnel between your laptop and the router at any Wi-Fi hot spot to protect your data from snoops on the public airwaves, even if you are using extra encryption. If you’re on a network that limits the use of certain applications, such as Skype, the VPN cou...

Protecting your Wi-Fi connection

When you connect to the Internet through a wireless access point, you are using radio transmitters to send data between the access point and your computer. Anybody else with a Wi-Fi–enabled computer or a specialized radio receiver can also receive those signals. Unless you protect your Wi-Fi network, anybody with a Wi-Fi network interface can use it to connect to the Internet and possibly open files on your own computers. In many neighborhoods and business districts, as many as a dozen or mor...

How To Set Up Wireless Encryption

Wi-Fi encryption uses the same key code on the access point and on each client computer to provide access to encrypted data. To add a key code to a Wi-Fi connection profile in Windows, follow these steps: 1. From the Control Panel or the system tray, open the Wireless Network Connection Properties window and choose the Wireless Networks tab. 2. Find the name of the network in the list of Preferred networks and click the Properties button. 3. Open the drop-down Data encryption menu ...

Configuring Wireless Network Security

You configure security on a wireless network by managing the properties for that wireless network connection. The pros, cons, and details of these various security methods are beyond the scope of this book; what is important is that you know how to configure Windows Vista to match the corresponding settings in use on your network. Managing wireless connection is done via the Manage Wireless Networks applet, which is available, like all other network applets in Windows Vista, via the Network and ...