Six Ways to Protect Your Wireless Network

Wireless networking products are so common and inexpensive that anyone can set up a wireless LAN very quickly; indeed many service providers are now giving away wireless routers as part of their broadband services. This widespread use of wireless networks has increased the possibility of network intruders being able to compromise your home or office network.

Most wireless LAN hardware is incredibly easy to set up and, in the case of hardware supplied by broadband providers, is often supplied pre-configured. However, it is worth checking the security configuration of your wireless LAN router; here are some simple things you can do to protect your wireless network.

Secure the administration interface. Wireless routers generally have an administrator password that must be entered before the configuration can be changed. Most devices will be preconfigured with a default administrator password and some devices will have no password at all. You should always ensure that an administration password is configured or, if the device has a default password, change it. If you leave the device with no password or with the password set to a default value you run the risk of the device being reconfigured without your knowledge; either by somebody who has managed to attach to your network or by malware that you have inadvertently downloaded.

Use WPA encryption instead of WEP. 802.11’s WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption has weaknesses that make is relatively easy to crack the encryption and access the wireless network. A better encryption standard is WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) which provides much better protection and is easier to use. WPA support is built into almost all modern wireless hardware and operating systems. WPA2 is a more recent version of the standard which provides even stronger encryption.

It is possible that you may have some devices that do not support WPA (often devices such as media players, PDAs etc). In this situation it is tempted to turn encryption off completely but this really will leave you wide open to attack. WEP encryption, for all its flaws, is better than nothing and therefore should be used where you have devices that do not support WPA. If you do use WEP make sure that you do not use an easy to guess encryption key. You should also consider changing the WEP encryption key at least once a week.

Don’t broadcast the SSID. Most wireless access points and wireless routers continuously broadcast the wireless network’s name, this is also called the Service Set Identifier or SSID. The purpose of this is to make it easy to configure wireless networks as wireless devices will be able to identify the wireless networks that are available. However, it also advertises the presence of your wireless network to any wireless systems in range. Turning of SSID broadcast will make your wireless network invisible to your neighbours and the casual intruder but it will still be visible to anybody with a wireless network sniffer.

Use MAC filtering. The MAC address is a hardware address associated with a network adaptor and, unlike and IP address, is globally unique to that adaptor. By using MAC filtering on your wireless access point or router you can control the specific devices that are permitted to connect to it. MAC addresses can be spoofed by somebody with sufficient knowledge, so this does not provide an absolute guarantee of security but it does give the attacker another hurdle to jump.

Disable remote administration. Many wireless LAN routers can be administered remotely from the Internet. You should only every use this feature if you are also able to define a specific IP addresses or a limited range of IP addresses that are able to administer the router. If you are not able to do this anyone, anywhere could potentially access your router. Unless you particularly need this feature it is best to disable it; most wireless LAN routers disable this feature by default but it is always worth checking.

Reduce the Wireless LAN transmitter power. This feature does not exist on all wireless LAN routers and access points, but some will allow you to decrease the power of the transmitter thereby reducing the range of the signal. It is usually impossible to fine-tune the signal to the point where it does not leak outside your premises but you can limit how far the signal reaches thus reducing the opportunity for people outside your premesis to access your wireless LAN.

Eye Chart Test for Conficker

At first glance this one looks a little odd .... the Conficker Eye Chart tests whether your computer is infected with Conficker, it does this by checking if your browser can access common anti-virus software which is often turned off on machines affected by Conficker.

Conficker (also known as Downadup, Kido) blocks access to over 100 anti-virus and security websites. If you are blocked from loading the remote images the first row of the table (popular anti-virus and security web sites) but not blocked from loading the remote images in the second row (alternative operating systems) it is an indication that your computer may be affected by Conficker of some other malware.

The Conficker Eye Chart can be accessed here.

Apple Releases Java Updates for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5

Apple has released Java for Mac OS X 10.4 Release 9 and Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4. These updates address multiple vulnerabilities in Java which may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. Further information is available in Apple articles HT3633 and HT3632.

New malware for Mac OS X

Security experts have discovered two new forms of MacOS X malware both of which were foiund on popular pornographic websites. Historically, the MacOS platform has had very little in the way of virus and trojans; but attacks against the Mac platform have been increasing.

The small amount of malware in circulation for the Mac platform has made some Mac owners complacent; Mac owners are less likely to running antivirus software, for example. This complacency has not been helped by Apple's approach to marketing.

In summay, the Mac platform is not exempt from malware. It is true that there is less than 70 known malware programs for the Mac (compared to millions for PC/Windows); but Mac owners should still make sure that they have an appropriate, up to date security suite installed and that they take sensible precautions.

Scareware, beware!

In its latest update, Microsoft has added code that detects and deletes the widespread Internet Antivirus Pro family of fake security programs. These programs, often referred to as scareware, are becoming more and more popular with high tech criminals. It is estimated that there were more than 9,000 bogus anti-malware programs in circulation in December 2008.

Recently the US government has moved to shut down some of the companies that have been peddling programs that falsely claim to find malcious software on PCs and then charge for the non-existant threats to be removed. As well as claiming to remove non-existant threats, the Internet Antivirus Pro software contains a password stealer that grabs login details.

Microsoft set to give away anti-virus software

Microsoft is reportedly trialling free anti-virus software and will release a beta version soon. The software, code named "Morro" will provide protection against viruses, rootkits, spyware and trojans but not have the broader range of protection that is found in commercial security products. No date has been given for when the software will be launched but in the past Microsoft have indicated that it would be by the end of 2009 at the latest.

The nice things about standards ....

A senior engineer from Hewlett-Packard once told me that the nice thing about standards was that you had so many to choose from ... this is particularly true of security standards. In this article I have reviewed the main security standards and commented on their applicability.

ISO/IEC 27001:2005

The ISO/IEC 27001:2005 standard covers all types of organisations and specifies the requirements for implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving a documented Information Security Management System (ISMS) and relates this to the organisation's overall business risks.

ISO/IEC 20000:2005

This standard was developed to reflect the best practice guidance contained within the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework. It consists of two part: Specification for IT Service Management and code of practice for service management. ITIL enables organisations to define a model to manage their IT operations covering areas such as service delivery, relationship management, resolution process, control processes, release processes, changed services and service management.

ISO/IEC 18028:2006

This was developed to define a standard security architecture that describes a framework to support the planning, design and implementation of network security. This standard had major contributions from the ITU X.805 standard.

PCI DSS 1.1:2006

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical measures. It is desgined to help reduce the frequency and impact of security incidents in the processing of payment cards. PCI-DSS is appliable to any oragnisation that is processing card payments.

This is a brief review of four major security standards and their relevance to different types of organisation.