WPA or WEP?

[stevo1210]

I have a Linksys WRT54G Wireless router here and I think some asswipe has decided to hack my network.
I turn off all my PCs and I still see the WLAN light and internet lights flashing. My modem is also flashing its lights.
I currently have WEP protection enabled and last month the asswipe racked up a $70 internet bill for me to pay. I only just figured out what was going on today so I disconnected the wireless and I'm on wires now. I have a problem with WPA-Personal(PSK?) though. I tried out that type of WLAN protection but my Cisco Aironet 350 series adapter doesn't enter the network anymore because the Cisco Aironet utility only supports WEP and my HP RX1950 PDA also suffers the same fate and doesn't even see my network SSID.

Any solutions to get around this? or am I stuck? or do I have to get my Linksys WAP 11 back out because that uses WEP encryption?

Thanks.

[kikkoman]

Re: WPA or WEP?

every kid can crack WEP nowadays in no time. i'd definitely switch to WPA, not only because of bandwidth leeching, but to prevent possible legal trouble, too.
even judges deem WEP a major negligence... questionable, but true.

that cisco adapter should support WPA with newer drivers, and from what google told me it seems that even that rx1950 does, you need to make sure you use only WPA, not WPA/WPA2.

edit: some people suggest a few things such as MAC filtering and hiding the SSID when using WEP, but it doesn't make a big difference. forget WEP.

[stevo1210]

Re: WPA or WEP?

I am using WPA-Personal on my Linksys WRT54G, but my RX1950 is oblivious to the network. If I set it to WEP on the other hand, all is well. But i do not want to use WEP again. So what should I do? buy a new PDA? (not really what I want to do)

Thanks.

[Krankshaft]

Re: WPA or WEP?

My Nintendo DS is retarded like that too (only supports WEP). My PSP on the other hand supports WPA personal which I use.

I had to get a special WIFI adapter to plug into the USB port on my networked desktop to still use the thing wirelessly online.

Unless you can flash a new firmware to the PDA that offers WPA support then no.

WEP is a script kiddies dream no skill needed to crack that inferior protection.

Sure the front door is locked but the key is always under the doormat .

I recently ditched my old D-Link 614+ Wireless-B which only had WEP been running it for 4 years now. Luckily nobody messed with me.

I recently upgraded to your wireless router it was a WAP54G (the wireless access point version of your router) got it used off E-bay for 30 bucks or so. All of my desktops are wired only my print servers, laptops, WII, and PSP, are wireless.

WAP is ALWAYS the way to go.

[kikkoman]

Re: WPA or WEP?

according to the official specs the rx1950 does WPA, so i'm pretty sure the bug is somewhere in the router's wifi settings.
as i said, you need to make sure it is WPA (neither WPA2 nor WPA/WPA2 mixed), and i'd try TKIP first.
if you're running an older firmware, you should consider updating it.

another option would be an SDIO wifi card, but the cheaper ones don't have any flash memory, you'd have to choose between sd card and wifi.

[jpdoe]

Re: WPA or WEP?

Hey Kikkoman... Why do you think MAC filtering is useless? I would have thougth it was the solution to the original poster's problems

To implement WPA fully, you need a RADIUS server. I've never set up WIFI that way.
WPA-PSK (pre shared key) or TKIP (i don't remember which) is how you set up WPA when you don't have a RADIUS server. You tell the clients and the WIFI access point what's the password in advance (hence the "pre shared key").

IIRC, I've been using WPA-PSK with TKIP, or WPA-TKIP (don't have the wifi access points at hand to look at the setup options). It has worked well with the smart phones they had in that office (Apple and HTC)

[kikkoman]

Re: WPA or WEP?

Hey Kikkoman... Why do you think MAC filtering is useless? I would have thougth it was the solution to the original poster's problems

because you can easily fake the 'good' MAC via software.

one more reason not to use a de-facto open WLAN (read: WEP) besides leeching and legal issues: privacy.
i recorded some traffic from some neighbor's (WEP-'protected') WLAN a while ago.. believe it or not, i found unencrypted login data for his e-mail account.
yes, in PLAIN TEXT.

that was REALLY creepy. it's like walking around with your pants down, asking people to look into your orifices.
in the end, i sent the guy a mail. he was really thankful.

about PSK: that's totally sufficient, of course. you don't need to set up a radius server for your home network.
you usually have the choice between TKIP and AES, it shouldn't matter which one you use.

@stevo: if all your wireless gear is 11mbit anyway, you can set the router to 802.11b only, maybe this helps.

[jpdoe]

Re: WPA or WEP?

Thanks for the clarification, Kikkoman.

[i4004]

Re: WPA or WEP?

>because you can easily fake the 'good' MAC via software.

but what mac will he fake if he doesn't know what i have inputted in the filter?
combined with not broadcasting the ssid(also, change default ssid name), i don't really see how can he penetrate the wlan...

any hacker is invited to break mine; 1st of all, he won't even know there's wlan here, and then how can he know mac address of my machines?
i didn't even put password on modem administration pages....

[kikkoman]

Re: WPA or WEP?

>because you can easily fake the 'good' MAC via software.

but what mac will he fake if he doesn't know what i have inputted in the filter?
combined with not broadcasting the ssid(also, change default ssid name), i don't really see how can he penetrate the wlan...

any hacker is invited to break mine; 1st of all, he won't even know there's wlan here, and then how can he know mac address of my machines?
i didn't even put password on modem administration pages....

every time someone (you) connects to that AP, the SSID is transmitted unencrypted. since you can simply "kick out" clients and force them to reconnect, this is not a big problem.
connected clients are shown as a MAC address in tools like kismet or airodump, so there's your 'good' MAC address.

[zandrax]

Re: WPA or WEP?

@ Stevo: everyone told you to switch to WPA: WEP is totally insecure and even a kid can break into, WPA-PSK is vulnerable to brute force cracking but this requires time to be applied and discourages most script kiddies
Try new drivers, most of times they include a so called WPA supplicant (a driver which encode/decode WPA streams). For the router look for a new firmware and check its settings.

@ i4004: Kikko is right: you can sniff any connection, read MAC addresses and change the MAC address of your lan chip with little or no hassle. For linux there are kimset for sniffing, "ifconfig hw" for changing the MAC and aircrack for cracking WEP passwords; for Windows there are rispectively Netstumbler, editing registry or MACShift, Aircrack too (though is more limited than its linux counterpart). You'll be surprised (or worried, it depends).

Zandrax

[jpdoe]

Re: WPA or WEP?

Hi, i4004.
The problem with wifi connections is that you can use tools to sniff what's being transmitted. Even if your access point does not publish its SSID, its existence will show up when it begins to communicate with its clients.
I've had limited experience playing with wifi, because I lack the equipment to play with. But WEP cracking definitively got to the point where script kiddies can get results.
And about MAC filtering, I can't speak about WPA configurations, but when dealing with WEP, all you need to do is let kismet work for a while, and if there's activity between access points and devices allowed into it by MAC filtering, kismet will inform you what's the MAC being used. All you need to do now is wait until the client offline, and you can get into the access point.

PS: it would seem the only real impediment to wifi cracking is locating the right toolset and setting up the environment for them. The most convenient path is Linux. But for experimentation's sake, I found it simpler to download a vmware appliance containing a linux workstation that had already been set up with the cracked wifi drivers the tools need to work at its full capacity.

[stevo1210]

Re: WPA or WEP?

I dunno if this is a good idea, but now I have my Linksys WRT54G up and running with WPA encrytion and I've also connected a Linksys WAP11 to it with WEP security so I can use my PDA. My mates think it's a stupid idea because it's like having a heavily secured back door, but the front door is just left open.

Thanks.

[kikkoman]

Re: WPA or WEP?

that's exactly what it's like.
seriously, there must be a way to use WPA with the PDA.
anything else is shit.

like zandrax already said, try a firmware update on that router.

[stevo1210]

Re: WPA or WEP?

This is strange but this morning I managed to connect my PDA to my Linksys WRT54G with WPA encryption and it worked fine for hours. Now it can't find my router again, but it can find (and connect to) my Dlink DI-524 router that has WPA encryption.

Now back to the AIronet 350 PCMCIA card. How do I use the Cisco Aironet utility to connect to a WPA network? Because I can only connect to a WEP or "LEAP" security netowrk according to the software. I have the newest drivers for my AIronet 350, but the software that allows me to connect to a network is kinda old (2004) and I don't really know what to do. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 4000 and runs on Windows 2000 SP4 if that helps at all.

Thanks.

[stevo1210]

Re: WPA or WEP?

Uh,i'm on my pda right now and im connected to my wrt54g using wpa encryption. Looks like the pda works with it now....

thanks.