Or certainly they might, which is why you should take wifi security more seriously. Your transmit power should always be aimed at giving you the best coverage performance and not used as a security measure.
This means that you really should avoid online banking, downloading apps or games, or online shopping on public connections. Hackers now sometimes use special gadgets to jump to the top of your Wi-Fi queue and pretend to be a recognised network. You should also be careful about what Wi-Fi network you are connecting to.
Hackers can easily set up an open Wi-Fi network with a safe-sounding name in an effort to trap people looking to save their data allowance. It may look like the real thing but ask yourself the question - Is it really safe? Always be sensible! Using a Virtual Private Network VPN like Norton Secure VPN can help protect your most sensitive information like passwords and credit card numbers while surfing public hot-spots, adding that extra layer off security to your public connections no matter where you are.
Regardless of the name, a long-standing myth suggests that disabling your SSID from broadcasting could hide your network from sticky-fingers hackers. If they want to, hackers will be able to find the hidden SSID. One thing you can do is secure your device with a password, which makes it more difficult for hackers to access your network. MAC address filtering will keep you safe This may sound complicated but it basically operates by using a Media Access Control MAC address, which identifies every device on your network.
Without getting too technical, you only enter the specific MAC address for devices that you want to give access to. While a MAC address sounds great to keep people out of your connection, there is one gaping flaw that will have you cursing all the time you spent setting it up. All a decent hacker needs is a wireless network analyser, which will let him see all the MAC addresses you have authorised. Still, it is fun to annoy your siblings or your other half if they keep hogging Netflix. They can then intercept, send and receive information from both parties without the victims being any wiser.
Encryption will keep your network safe Unlike the other myths, this one has an element of truth to it. Encryption works by disguising the data that is being sent over your network.
It will stop people from eavesdropping on you and protect you and your information. These information exchanges between the client and the access point are known as wireless probe requests and responses.
The problem is that the probe requests and responses always include your SSID. Free and well-known tools such as NetStumbler and NetSurveyor make it extremely easy for not only pernicious hackers but also curious enthusiasts to see all the hidden networks that are within range.
These tools capture the probe conversations and display the SSID in plain sight. In addition, many of them have special features that enable anyone to specifically seek non-broadcast networks. Linksys has a few articles about securing your router. Here are the knowledgebase articles from a few of the big guys:. In other words, if your home wireless network is configured as a non-broadcast wireless network and you take your laptop to your job, the airport, the library, the coffee shop or the park — your laptop will still periodically send a probe request searching for your preferred network.
And this probe has the SSID so why should you waste any time disabling it? I think part of the appeal of hiding the wireless network is the ease of implementation. A computer novice connects to his home wireless router via Next, he blithely clicks Save , leans back in his chair with hands behind his head and breaths a sigh of relief.
But this faulty for the reasons I showed above. Instead of using security through obscurity use security through reality. First your opponent would have to sniff enough data packets to reverse engineer the key via sufficient interactions.
Then assuming the Black Hat got you there, the next challenge would be to discover a valid MAC address and impersonate a legit node. This has several hurtles. Black Hat needs to read decrypted Advanced Encryption System.
Thank you! I had strong router password with numbers, letters, capital letters and symbols. You'll see in this screenshot the lhdevnet network, which I've hidden on the router. Real hackers are going to be using tools like Kismet and Aircrack to figure out the SSID before they crack your network, so whether or not a particular tool is showing the right data is beside the point. You should also note that you can use this tool to figure out how to change the wireless router channel and optimize your Wi-Fi signal.
Now that you know how simple it really is for people to find your ID, wouldn't you rather use the default networking configurations where you can easily select the network from a list? Why go through all the steps required to connect to a hidden network?
For a network that is broadcasting, all you have to do is click twice. And that's just Windows 7, which makes wireless networking easy—having to go through all the configuration screens on every single one of your devices is just ridiculous. This isn't quite as much of a problem since Windows 7 came along, but back in the Windows XP days, there were quite a few connection problems when you were using a hidden SSID, not to mention getting disconnected and connecting to the wrong network.
Basically, Windows would automatically try to connect to a less preferred network that was broadcasting instead of a preferred network with a hidden SSID—the only way around it was to disable automatic connection to the broadcasting one, which was annoying as well. The same thing holds true with some other devices—I've seen problems with Android phones, and you can just do some quick Google searches to find loads of other issues that are all resolved by not using a hidden SSID.
There's another problem with hiding your wireless network name: depending on the device, many devices won't let you automatically connect to a hidden network, and if you have automatic connection enabled, you're actually leaking your network name, as we'll explore below. When you hide your wireless SSID on the router side of things, what actually happens behind the scenes is that your laptop or mobile device is going to start pinging over the air to try and find your router-no matter where you are.
So you're sitting there at the neighborhood coffee shop, and your laptop or iPhone is telling anybody with a network scanner that you've got a hidden network at your house or job. Microsoft's Technet explains exactly why hidden SSIDs are not a security feature , especially with older clients:. A non-broadcast network is not undetectable.
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