These wireless modem routers are devices that connect multiple wireless networks. It can send information to where it was directly needed in the network. And they only require minimal amount of cables. There are two popular kinds of wireless connection: the 802.11g and the 802.11b connection. This wireless router also acts as a firewall, wherein it protects the network from any kind of malicious attacks like malwares and viruses.

If you wanted to install a wireless connection in your own network your must have the following: Wireless router/modem, an Internet connection, and computers that will be involved in your network. Here are some steps that will help you hook up your router to the internet :

1. Pick modem and router preferably from the same brand for full compatibility.
2. Check your internet access with your provider.
3. Set your wireless router where it is always accessible for easier maintenance as well as range visibility.
4. Strictly follow the manufacturer’s direction in the installation.
5. Do the network configuration as instructed in the User’s Manual of the product.
6. Three things need to be configured: the wireless network name called as SSID, the type of wireless encryption, and the Wireless Protected Access password. Save theses configurations after you have set it.

Mostly all modern day desktop computers, mobile devices and laptops have already built-in wireless router support. This feature will automatically detect and connect if applicable to all existing wireless network..

Getting wireless surveillance cameras for home security are preferably chosen than common wired surveillance cameras due to the bulk of wiring involved and ease of installation and management. These wireless surveillances are primarily used from home surveillances especially in keeping strict tabs on your babysitter to securing the office or factory warehouse.

The excusive selling mark of these wireless surveillance cameras is that it can be easily installed to almost any home or location you want and its security is so evasive because of its wireless capability. Camera wireless security consists of a camera fitted with a transmitter inside along with a receiver. It also comes with a 12 volt power adapter, an antenna to connect to the receiving end for monitoring. Other surveillance cameras have a recorder; but this is only necessary when it is required to record any monitored videos.

There are different wireless surveillances out in the market. If you truly want to protect your business from unknowing thieves who intends to break in, you might need more than a home security camera can provide if you definitely want them caught. Home wireless surveillance systems possess high technology receivers tan can even penetrate walls, as well as wood, glass, plastic and even metals. Some recent updates to these wireless surveillances have tilt, pan, and zoom features in them. And they can zoom up to 4x its actual size.

And when connected to a computer, these cameras have high quality MPEG-4 feature compression. Also, these home wireless surveillance cameras is still said to be a technology in progress, there are still in constant feature upgrade, that results in greater capability and security support that has been spared some two years ago.

For more information about home security cameras check out this great guide to home security :

http://www.security4wireless.com/go/home-security-guide.html

Linksys router setup

The first thing to do at the time of the Linksys wireless network installation is the placement of the intelligent router according to the area to be covered. However, it is not unusual for the area covered, is in fact largely higher than desired, in which case it is possible to reduce the power of the access point router to adapt its supply to the area to cover. However, the most effective solution is to enable encryption between the Linksys router setup and the computers / network devices. To avoid problems of confidentiality of trade to the wireless network, 802.11 standard includes a simple mechanism for encoding data, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy are).

Wireless networks can connect to the Internet, share files and play with ease. However, its disadvantage is that your wireless activity can be captured by anyone connected to your wireless network. Therefore, critical information such as email passwords and credit card information can be stolen easily. To avoid this problem, the Linksys router allows you to encrypt their communications network in your wireless network. To do this, you have four security mode:

• WEP.
• WPA.
• WPA2.
• WPA mixed.

The safest way is WPA2. Read the following instructions to encrypt wireless communications in the network:

Step 1: Open your favorite web browser application and enter the IP address 192.168.1. 1 in the address field. Then press Enter.

Step 2: In the authentication dialog box, type the administrator username and password. The defaults are admin / admin as username / password.

However, on some platforms Linksys router, the default value for the user name is blank and the password is admin.

Step 3: Open the Wireless tab.

Step 4: Click Wireless Security.

Step 5: In the Security Mode drop-down list, select either WEP or WPA-Personal or WPA2-Personal or WPA2 mixed. Otherwise, select Disable.

Step 6: If WEP mode is selected, then select the drive that the key to use, select a level of WEP encryption, and enter either a passphrase or 4 buttons in the appropriate text boxes. Otherwise, enter the encryption password in the Password text box and the amount of time the router is expected to renew the keys in the Group box text key renewal.

Step 7: Click Save Settings.

1896 Guglielmo Marconi develops the first wireless telegraph system

1927 First commercial radiotelephony service operated between Britain and the US

1946 First car-based cellphone set up in St. Louis, exploitation ‘push-to-talk’ technology

1948 Claude Shannon publishes two benchmark papers on Information Theory, containing the basis for data compression (source encoding) and error detection and correction (channel encoding)

1950 TD-2, the first terrestrial microwave telecom system, established to support 2400 telephone circuits

1950s Late in the decade, several ‘push-to-talk’ mobile systems established in big cities for CB-radio, taxis, etc.

1950s Late in the decade, the first paginating access control equipment (PACE) paging systems established

1960s Early in the decade, the Improved Mobile Telephone System (IMTS) built with simultaneous transmit and receive, more channels, and greater power

1962 The first communication satellite, Telstar, launched into orbit

1964 The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (INTELSAT) established, and in 1965 launches the Early Bird geostationary satellite

1968 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – US (DARPA) selected BBN to develop the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the father of the modern Internet

1970s Packet switching emerges as an efficient means of data communications, with the X.25 standard emerging late in the decade

1977 The Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), invented by Bell Labs, first installed in the US with geographic regions divided into ‘cells’ (i.e. cellular telephone)

1983 January 1, TCP/IP selected as the official protocol for the ARPANET, leading to rapid growth

1990 Motorola files FCC application for permission to launch 77 (revised down to 66) low earth orbit communication satellites, known as the Iridium System (element 77 is Iridium)

1992 One-millionth host connected to the Internet, with the size now approximately doubling every year

1993 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) established for reliable transmission over the Internet in conjunction with the Transport Control Protocol (TCP)

1994–5 FCC licenses the Personal Communication Services (PCS) spectrum (1.7 to 2.3 GHz) for $7.7 billion

1998 Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba announce they will join to make grow Bluetooth for wireless data exchange between hand-held computers or cellphones and stationary computers

1990s Late in the decade, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) based on the Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) and IPSEC security techniques went available

2000 802.11(b)-based networks are in popular demand

2001 Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) Security is cracked.

The search for greater security for 802.11(x)-based networks growths

Since those times, radio Communicating have come a long way. Commercial radio stations, television broadcasts, cellular phone networks, satellite data-links, slow-scan amateur video transmissions, baby monitors, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and GPS navigation systems all practice wireless technology.

The practice of encryption in Communications is nothing new either. In fact, it’s been used for centuries to protect sensitive messages, such as those sent from Caesar to his battlefield generals. The famous Enigma cipher machine was used during World War II to encrypt radio Communications. Communicating for television transmissions were encrypted with VideoCipher II in 1986. VideoCipher systems often used DES for video encryption. In 2001, the National Institute of standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States selected Rijndael as a federal replacement for DES, thus naming Rijndael the new Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES has been incorporated in publicly available wireless Communications devices as one of the algorithms for WPA. Some attempts are now available for AES, such as timing attacks that exploit the properties of certain types of hardware. Data encryption and Communications security continue to remain an active area of research to this day.

Basic principles of Wireless

The added convenience and capabilities offered by wireless are not without a price, however. By offering new features and allowing for distributed operation, threats against the systems connected to wireless networks have increased. Break-ins to wireless networks are on the rise. The accessibility of wireless Communicating equipment has led to the proliferation of wireless networks and individuals who attack them. As wireless equipment becomes more ubiquitous, the economic system of scale allows more people to acquire the hardware necessary to mount an attack against that equipment. The increasing amount of information and services available through wireless networks makes the systems connected to them much more attractive targets.

What is Wifi ?

In order to understand the new threats a wireless network can pose, a basic understanding of radio frequency transmission and the technologies currently used to handle wireless Communications is necessary.

Wireless equipment uses radio frequencies to communicate. These are electromagnetic emissions in the range of 3 Hz to 300 GHz. Although it creates electromagnetic emissions, a microwave oven is generally not considered a wireless device, as the radio waves are not used to communicate (sans firing a microwave oven at someone with a trebuchet). However, radio frequencies generated by other equipment are used for Communications, such as those from cellular phones and Wi-Fi cards. These radio frequencies are received by the devices you want to communicate with to transmit information. They can also be received by devices you don’t want to communicate with, exposing sensitive information.

Normalization and regulation of wireless technology

Radio frequency transmissions are regulated by various organizations based on geographic limit. At the world level, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) coordinates the allocations of radio frequencies, and within the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates and enforces radio frequency allotments. The regulation of radio transmissions by the various regional bodies ultimately affects the design and deployment of wireless networks. Radio frequency propagation issues that are present in one regional area may not be an issue in another due to regional allocations. For example, the frequencies from 222 MHz through 225 MHz are available for some amateur radio use in the U.S., but in the U.K., those frequencies are marked for military practice. As such, wireless twist manufacturers have to be cognizant of regional differences so users of the devices are within regulatory compliance for their region.

The wireless standards recognize these regional differences and specify frequency allocations and transmission standards that allow interoperability within the various regulatory domains. The Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has taken these regional differences into account when designing and ratifying wireless networking measures. One visible aspect of these regulatory controls is the numbering of transmission channels in the IEEE 802.11X measures (the “X” in 802.11X is a placeholder for other letters; there is no 802.11X standard per se). Different restrictive domains have access to different channels, and the numbering of channels may be discontinuous when viewed by the user. When examining the list of available wireless lines on 802.11 devices, you might have noticed certain channel numbers are “missing”; the missing channels are transmission bands removed or disabled due to regional emissions regulations.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is another common wireless Communications protocol. The Bluetooth protocol is often used for devices such as cellular phones, headsets, digital cameras, and other devices not often viewed as being “computers.” Wireless headsets for cellular phones are often Bluetooth devices. Cellular phones that offer calendar and address book synchronization capabilities with software running on a user’s laptop often employ the Bluetooth protocol. You can practice a keyboard and mouse over the protocol as well, employing Bluetooth to connect them to the computer.

Data Interception

One attack that must be considered when using wireless technology is the threat of data interception. In data interception, one of the key benefits of wireless technologies also leads to one of its greatest weaknesses. Because radio transmissions are broadcast through the air to target devices, any system properly configured within the radio broadcast range can also receive the wireless messages. Thus, devices that should not be on the wireless network can receive the transmissions. The extension of the network by wireless technologies has also increased the attack surface available to malicious users; an adversary can become part of a network and interact with systems that were not designed to operate in a hostile environment.

A common activity used for wireless attacks is war driving. A malicious individual can drive around with a laptop and a wireless receiver listening to the radio traffic being broadcast. Programs running on the laptop can be set up to automatically analyze the data and attempt to break into the networks as they are found. In addition, many attackers also correlate the data with GPS information to create a map of wireless access points. Based on their location, attackers can later revisit these access points for further attack.

Data Encryption

The use of data obfuscation through cryptographic ciphers and algorithms has been around for a long time. The Atbash alphabet was used to obscure the names of various items in Hebrew writings, such as the Bible. The obfuscation method commonly used on Usenet, rot13, has its origins in the scytales that were believed to have been used by ancient Greeks, whereby they wrapped a strip of paper around a stick, wrote the message, and transported the strip of paper. Only someone with a stick of equivalent diameter would be able to read the message.

The need for encryption has carried through from ancient times. Modern computer networks also make heavy use of encryption technology. As wireless technologies continue to spread, the use of encryption and authentication schemes has become more important for many users. Privacy concerns, classified information, and trade secrets are transmitted over wireless technologies. An adversary who receives the data being transmitted over the wireless link will still have to crack the encryption before the data being protected can be read. Transmissions from hostile sources trying to spoof the identity of an authorized party still need to subvert or break the authentication mechanism before the data will be accepted.

There are problems and limitations in many of the current encryption deployments for wireless technologies, however. The initial encryption mechanism used by 802.11X protocols is known as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). WEP has a serious design flaw that allows hostile entities to derive the encryption key and see all traffic with relative ease. Access control mechanisms that used the Media Access Control (MAC) address of networked devices no longer give IT professionals any guarantee a rogue device is within an easily identified physical area. Wireless address book synchronization capabilities in cellular phones and other portable devices allow address books to be stolen when implemented incorrectly, for example, Bluesnarfing for Bluetooth-enabled devices.

With advances in cryptanalysis, software for analyzing wireless network traffic and deriving encryption keys and passwords has become commonplace. Assigning a complex encryption key for WEP still allows an attacker to find out what the key is within a matter of minutes using software such as aircrack and WepLab. Using stronger encryption algorithms with weak keys leaves networks vulnerable to dictionary attacks that use lists of words and permutations to try and guess encryption keys. Both aircrack and WepLab support this mode of operation as well.

Input Hijacking

Attackers can do more than just steal data being transmitted over wireless links. Many devices and software services accept input from the user to take action. This command channel can be hijacked, allowing the attacker to interact with sensitive applications they should not have access to.

Using a wireless input device such as a keyboard can allow passwords and credit card information to be intercepted. Hijacking the connection and taking control of the input may be possible as well, allowing the attacker to input arbitrary data, change passwords on online bank account interfaces, purchase a thousand bags of composting material to be delivered to your door, or send letters of resignation to your employer.

Popular wireless keyboard receivers can pick up transmissions from a different keyboard. If the communications travel over radio links instead of infrared, an attacker can sit down nearby and associate with the receiver using the same make and model of keyboard. In many cases, hijacking the mouse can be done through the same receiver as well.

In order to use such devices safely, you must gain a basic understanding of radio emission characteristics in order to assess the risk of using such devices for sensitive data. Chapter 2 will cover the nature of radio emissions to allow you to evaluate the risks of data interception and command channel hijacks in more detail.

Business Impacts of Wireless Threats

There are many consequences of having the network security of a business compromised. Payroll and benefits data may be exposed; trade secrets can end up in the hands of competitors; data theft disclosure laws such as the California Security Breach Information Act (CA1386) can force a company to notify customers their private data have been stolen; and access to business-critical services from third-party vendors may be suspended until problems have been remediated to their satisfaction.

Preventing these problems holds a high priority for IT administrators. Various precautions and security measures implemented at network gateways such as firewalls, creation of bastion hosts, VPN tunnels, and host hardening have been used to mitigate the risks of data theft and network intrusion. However, all of the effort put into securing a network can be rendered moot by the careless installation of a single wireless access point. By enabling wireless devices to connect to the internal network within an office, attackers can enter the range of radio transmissions and join the internal network without having to circumvent the access control mechanisms already in place at the network perimeter and the physical access control systems as well.

The traffic and security monitoring system present at the wired network perimeter will not log attacks carried out from a rogue system already within the trusted network. Deployment of security-critical patches and host hardening activity are often lagging within a trusted network in comparison to the network perimeter.

You might look for logs such as LAN users, connection or status log, or connected MAC addresses. And you can also use a tool to check the IP/MAC on your wireless network IP range.

Verify the MAC addresses

To find out who is on your network, you have to make a list of all the devices that are meant to be connected. Find out their MAC adresses and their IP addresses if they are static.

To find out the MAC and IP address on Windows OS, click the Start menu and choose Run. Type cmd and click OK. In the screen that opens, type ipconfig/all and hit Enter. The MAC address will be shown as the physical address.

Once you know the MAC addresses of each of the computers on your wireless network, you will recognise any addresses that don’t belong under the window that shows the MAC addresses of current clients.

Check the IP addresses

Similarly you can see how many IP addresses have been dipped out by the DHCP server. If you check the IP of each of your computers, you can see if other IP addresses have been used in your wireless network.

To find out your IP address on Windows OS : Click Run ? type in cmd ? type ipconfig/all ? which will display the IP address for that computer.

Use a software to scan for IP/MAC

Zamzom Wireless Network Tool (google it for download) is a free tool that can do a quick scan for you. Just load it up, hit Fast Scan and it will show you the IP and MAC addresses of every computer that is connected to your WAN. You can also perform a deep scan, but a fast scan will be enough for most users.

Dealing with intruders

If you find someone using your wireless router, they may well not be doing so nastily or intentionally. Sometimes people can’t tell which is their own connection and they may honestly believe that they are using their wireless router. In this case, the best thing that you can do is to secure your own wireless network.

To address the confidentiality issues of trade wireless networks, the 802.11 standard includes a simple mechanism for encryption of data, it is Wired Equivalent Privacy.

However, several serious vulnerabilities were identified by cryptologists. WEP is sometimes dubbed with the nickname of Weak Encryption Protocol. WEP has been superseded by WPA in 2003 and by WPA in 2004 (WPA2 is the version of the IEEE 802.11i standard certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

WEP is an encryption protocol in charge of 802.11 frames using the RC4 symmetric algorithm with key length of 64 bits or 128 bits. The principle of WEP is to define initially a secret key of 40 or 128 bits. This secret key must be declared at the access point and clients. The key is to create a pseudo-random length equal to the length of the frame. Each transmission of data is then encrypted using the pseudo-random number as a mask with an Exclusive or between the pseudo-random number and the frame.

The session key shared by all stations is static, that to deploy a large number of wireless stations it is necessary to configure them using the same session key. Thus knowledge of the key is sufficient to decrypt communications.

In addition, 24-bit key is used only for initialization, which means that only 40-bit 64-bit key used to encrypt and actually 104 bits to 128 bits key.

In the case of 40-bit key, a brute-force attack (trying all possible keys) can quickly bring the hacker to find the session key. Also a fault detected by Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir on the generation of pseudo-random string makes possible the discovery of the session key stock 100 MB to 1 GB of traffic created intentionally.

WEP is not sufficient to ensure real privacy. However, it is strongly advised to at least implement a 128-bit WEP protection to ensure a minimum level of confidentiality and avoiding in this way 90% risk of intrusion.

To get a higher level of security you should use WPA or WPA2. Use of encrypted tunneling protocols can provide secure data transmission under an insecure network. But replacements for WEP have been developed to restore security to the Wifi  network itself.

Today’s wireless networking products don’t always help the situation as configuring their security features can be time-consuming and non-intuitive. The tips below go over the steps you should take to improve the security of your home wireless network.

• Change the default wireless  settings
  

You can read about changing default setting (username, password ans SSID) here :
http://www.security4wireless.com/always-change-your-wireless-default-settings/

• Enable WPA / WEP encryption

All wireless equipment supports some form of encryption. Encryption technology scrambles messages sent over wireless networks so that they cannot be easily read by humans.

Many encryption technologies exist for Wifi. Of course you will want to pick the strongest encryption that works with your network. However, the way these technologies work, all Wifi devices on your network must share the the same encryption settings. Consequently you may need to find a “lowest common demoninator” setting.

• Disable SSID broadcast

The wireless access point or router typically broadcasts the network name (Service Set IDentifier) at regular intervals. This element was designed for businesses and mobile hotspots where clients may roam in and out of range.

In the home network, this roaming characteristic is needless, and it increases the probability someone will try to login to your home network. Luckily, most wireless access points allow the SSID broadcast feature to be disabled by the network manager.

• Enable physical MAC address filtering

Every part of wireless gear possesses a unique identifier called MAC address. Access points & routers keep track of the MAC addresses of all devices that connect to them. Lots of such products offer the owner an option to key in the MAC addresses of their home equipment that restricts the network to only permit connections from those devices.

Make this, but also know that the feature is not so powerful as it may seem. Hackers & their program programs can fake MAC addresses easily.

• Turn off auto-connect

Connecting to an open wireless network such as a public wireless hotspot or your neighbor’s router exposes your computer to security risks. Although not normally enabled, most computers have a setting available allowing these connections to happen automatically without notifying you (the user). This setting should not be enabled except in temporary situations.

• Make firewalls on computers and router

Most network routers contain built-in firewall capability, but the option also exists to disable them. Make sure that your router’s firewall is turned on. For extra protection, consider installing and running personal firewall software on each computer connected to the router.

• Assign static IP to Wifi devices

Most home networks drop toward using dynamic IP addresses. DHCP technology is indeed easy to set up. However, this convenience also works to the benefit of network hackers who can easily obtain valid IP addresses from your network’s DHCP pool.

Disable DHCP on the router or access point, set a fixed IP address range instead, then configure each connected device to match. Use a private IP address range (like 10.0.0.x) to prevent computers from being directly reached from the Internet.

• Turn off the wifi network when you don’t use it

Shutting down your network will most certainly prevent outside hackers from breaking in! While impractical to turn off and on the devices frequently, at least think about doing so during travel or extended periods offline.

Computer disk drives have been known to suffer from power cycle wear-and-tear, but this is a secondary concern for broadband modems and routers.

If you own a wireless router but are only using it wired connections, you may turn off Wifi on a broadband router without powering down the entire network.

• Position the access point safely

Wireless signals normally reach to the exterior of a home. A small amount of signal leakage outdoors isn’t a problem, but the more this signal reaches, the easier it is for attackers to detect and exploit. Wifi signals frequently reach through neighboring homes.

When installing a Wifi home network, the position of router and access point determines its reach. Try to position these devices near the center of your home rather than near windows.

Change your default username and password :

Most of wireless access points & routers permit an admin to manage their WiFi network through a special admini account. This root account provides complete superuser access to the device’s configuration settings with a special username and password.

Manufacturers set both the account user/pass at the factory. The username is often basically the word admin or administrator. The password is typically empty (blank), the words “admin,” “1234,” or “password,” or some other simple password.

To improve the security of a wireless network, you ought to change the administrative password on your wireless access point or router immediately when installing the unit.

The default passwords for popular models of wireless network gear are well-known to hackers & often posted on the Net. Most devices do not permit the administrative username to be changed, but if yours does, you have to change this name too.

Finally, to maintain home network security in the future, continue changing this root password regularly, not three times. Lots of experts recommend changing passwords every 30 days. Use words that would be impossible for others to guess.

Change the default Service Set IDentifier (SSID) :

SSID is a name that identifies a wireless LAN. A client device receives broadcast messages from all access points within range promotion their SSIDs. As the SSID displays to users, it normally consists of human-readable characters. But the standard does not require this.

The SSID is defined as a sequence of 1–32 octets each of which may take any character.
The SSID can be accessed from within these products’ Web-based or Windows-based configuration utilities.

Common examples of pre-defined SSIDs are simple names like “network,” “wireless,” “1234,” or “default.” An SSID can be changed at any time, as long as the alter is also made on all wireless clients in the network.
To increase the security of your home wireless network, modify the SSID to a strong name.

How to make strong password and SSID :

You can generate a strong password using some tools and online generating strong passwords. However, here are some recommended tips to make a strong password (and SSID) based on security practices :

• At least 10 characters in length.
• Does not contain your user name, real name, organization name, family member’s names or names of your pets.
• Does not contain your birth date.
• Does not contain a complete dictionary word.
• Is significantly different from your previous password.

Should contain three (3) of the following character types :

• Lowercase Alphabetical (a, b, c, etc.)
• Uppercase Alphabetical (A, B, C, etc.)
• Numerics (0, 1, 2, etc.)
• Special Characters (@, %, !, etc.)