Wi-Fi or wired: whats safer?

[vincent]

just a lil curious still not sure i see the world of net working leaning towards wi-fi

[vincent]

anyone ?

[clonk]

Geeze, its late, no need to bump your thread after 12 minutes. Either networking medium is vunerable to hacking as long as it is connnected to the internet, but wireless networks add another level to the picture. WEP is easily bypassed (I don't know anything about WPA) and anyone who can 'see' your wireless signal has the potential to access it. Obviously someone could infultrate a wired network if they got near a jack, but that is considerably harder.

I drove down one of my town's main roads and using a Wireless scanning tool indentified over 100 wireless networks over the course of maybe 40 blocks. I'd say maybe 20 of those had WEP enabled.

So yes, wireless has the potential to be far less secure, but you can take steps to make it significantly more secure.

[clonk]

I suggest you have a look at this thread where they are discussing WEP and other wireless security measures.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=122932

[vincent]

thx, and sorry for the thread bump i just didnt see it on the homepage anymore and thought users wont respond

[aaron901]

i've never been hacked, so to me both are safe, wifi just makes life much more easier! :)

[CyberKewl]

In my opinion wired is safer at the moment because Wi-Fi is still new and there are already a number of complaints on the security of Wi-Fi. But so far i've never faced any problems in terms of security...

[Inertia]

128-bit WEP (Wired equivilant privacy) does have a vulnerability to break the encryption key, a program can calculate the key after it has sniffed around 2gb of traffic, now concider how long that would take on your average home network, Ide say a fairly long time, so is anyone gonna actualy bother ? just to look at your family photos or delete notepad.exe from you windir for a laugh ? I doubt it.

Ide say its pretty safe, especialy if you change your key monthly or more often, and have a secure network as well.

In the end tho, wired networking , with well shielded out of the way cables, is always going to be more secure.

[Steven]

WEP Sucks.

I suggesty you look into WPA enabled products either built in or via firmware upgrades and get the Windows updates that gives you this better security.

I don't use any encryption security on my wireless network. The range of my wireless devices does not warrent the need for such a thing.

[Inertia]

WEP Sucks.

I suggesty you look into WPA enabled products either built in or via firmware upgrades and get the Windows updates that gives you this better security.

I don't use any encryption security on my wireless network. The range of my wireless devices does not warrent the need for such a thing.

unless you arent bothered about people using your network I would definatly implement encryption.

WEP isnt brilliant, but it doesnt "blow" it does the job to a level, its kind of like fitting an extra lock to your door, it wont stop thieves, but it may deter them or slow them down.

I woudl say relying on the range of your equiptment alone as a security measure isnt very good. There are lots of devices that could easily get through this like high gain antenna`s and pre-amplifiers. It is good to use equiptment which has a limited range as a security method, but encryption on top of that is almost imperative if you want to protect your Data.

If you dont have a lot of traffic going over your network WEP will do the job very well if you rotate a set of keys say every week.

[morkuma]

from my gf's house, i can connect to 2 seperate wireless enabled houses

from my friends, i can get three

i will stick to my wired connections :p

[Inertia]

from my gf's house, i can connect to 2 seperate wireless enabled houses

from my friends, i can get three

i will stick to my wired connections :p

I can connect to 2 from here too, people do not know how to use the technology, they just plug n play, which is the biggest fault in Wireless networking.

I think it would be a lot safer if it simply did not work until the EU gave it a key, and then it will only work with encryption enabled!

[tkyoshi]

Enable Association MAC Control.

That way no one can assosicate with the network until they have the right WEP key, but even if they do the base station won't let them on because their MAC isn't stored in the station.

The problem is that you gotta punch in the MAC address of every wireless computer you have and if a friend comes over you'll have to put his in too if he wants to use the wireless network.

[Inertia]

Enable Association MAC Control.

That way no one can assosicate with the network until they have the right WEP key, but even if they do the base station won't let them on because their MAC isn't stored in the station.

The problem is that you gotta punch in the MAC address of every wireless computer you have and if a friend comes over you'll have to put his in too if he wants to use the wireless network.

yes this is another good extra bit of security you can put on a wireless network.

A lot of "base stations" have this feature, but instead of having to type in every address, you boot up your PC`s , and say you have 10 of them, make sur eall 10 are in full signal and on the network, then the base station will say "I have 10 mac addresses" and list them, you then can tell it to lock out any othe r addresses.

of course if it finds 11 mac addresses then you have to go through manualy and see which one is the trespasser and block that out.

[LordHatrus]

Definitely wired....

but, i've seen examples of security being 'stupid' in either case.

At airports/lobbies/schools/universities they ometimes have network jacks (or phone jacks... time to use dial-up on someone else's place!) and the network is running, like, without any security, and they've got NETBIOS enabled, so it just accepts you into the network, and assigns you an IP. How nice :)

or, I can see my neighbor's 802.11b network from my house (if I point my antenna in the right direction) and he didnt have MAC address list enabled, so it didnt take me too long to crack the encrypt.

btw, whoever said 'the range of my devices isn't enough to warrant the security' I'll have you know that my friend's have very nice antenna's mounted on the tops of their houses, and they can connect with networks from a little more than a mile away. With line of sight, they can connect to each other from across the entire town. (well, it IS a small town :rolleyes: )

So, it doesn't really matter how great you're broadcasting... it's how great we're listening :)

[Steven]

unless you arent bothered about people using your network I would definatly implement encryption.

WEP isnt brilliant, but it doesnt "blow" it does the job to a level, its kind of like fitting an extra lock to your door, it wont stop thieves, but it may deter them or slow them down.

I woudl say relying on the range of your equiptment alone as a security measure isnt very good. There are lots of devices that could easily get through this like high gain antenna`s and pre-amplifiers. It is good to use equiptment which has a limited range as a security method, but encryption on top of that is almost imperative if you want to protect your Data.

If you dont have a lot of traffic going over your network WEP will do the job very well if you rotate a set of keys say every week.

thats great....yaddy yaddy yaddy.

I don't use encryption; never will.

[rocks1985]

I can connect to 2 from here too, people do not know how to use the technology, they just plug n play, which is the biggest fault in Wireless networking.

I think it would be a lot safer if it simply did not work until the EU gave it a key, and then it will only work with encryption enabled!

But that is what makes WiFi so great! you buy your laptop with WiFi and you can be connected to the internet for free. I mean...doesn't anyone think it should be that way?

[Inertia]

But that is what makes WiFi so great! you buy your laptop with WiFi and you can be connected to the internet for free. I mean...doesn't anyone think it should be that way?

you woudlnt be thinking that if you were paying for a 10 megabit connection and the kid next door was using it to leech his porn, and you were getting worse than modem speeds. Also whilst leeching his porn he`s scanning through your hard drive, planting the odd trojan, and maybe uploading that internet banking access code you made a note of

[Dessimat0r]

Its obvious that the safest option is wired. Think about it... with wired you have a physical cable, which the signal travels along, but with wireless you have no cable and signals have a range from the transmitter. Now, which one are people going to have the most trouble connecting to? The physical network inside your house, where people have to physically link their computer up to an empty socket on a hub or whatever, or the wireless accessible from outside your house?

Bit of a stupid question, really.