by Eric Meyer

War drivers are in the business of finding wireless access points, documenting them and uploading their locations to the web. Why would someone do this, well for several reasons:

First they want free internet access. Next they could just be war driving as a hobby; finally they could be targeting your network for financial gain. One of the most asked questions is how do you stop hackers from trying to hack your wireless lan and how to catch them in the act.

by Tony Stockill

Many have cursed their computer for taking things too literally! It’s easy to blame the computer when something goes wrong.

You get to the checkout at the market, and the item you bought ‘on special’ comes up at the full price. The manager has to be called to fix it up, and what does he say? “We’ve been having problems with the computer, it gets the wrong price on some things.”

You put in a list of addresses to your Word processor, and print off party invitations for next week. Then you find that today’s date has been inserted in the signature block - by the computer!

Maybe you have heard the expression ‘Garbage in Garbage out”? Someone, at some point instructed the computer to do what it did, It didn’t decide to screw you up deliberately. Computers can only do what they are told, they are more logical than Spock and they take everything literally.

We are going to look at why they are so pedantic!
Continue reading ‘It’s a Binary World - How computers count.’

If you want another take on wireless network security, here’s an excellent article by Andy Atkinson on the topic:

5 minute wireless network security

Everyone agrees that security is important, no one agrees on how much effort should go into securing your home wireless LAN. The good news is that there are some basic steps you can take that require just 5 minutes of your time. In this article I will show you how to add various layers of security to your home wireless LAN. The specific wireless router I will be using is a Linksys WRT54G, a popular 802.11g (54 Mbps) device. Most wireless routers use similar terminology so you will likely be able to find some useful information in this article even if you don’t have this specific Linksys router.

And if you need to see the big picture on wireless in your home or small office, this article by Bradley Mitchell is also great:

Setting up a home wireless network

Many folks setting up wireless home networks rush through the job to get their Internet connectivity working as quickly as possible. That’s totally understandable. It’s also quite risky as numerous security problems can result. Today’s Wi-Fi products don’t always help the situation as configuring their security features can be slow and non-intuitive. The recommendations below summarize the steps you should take, in order to importance, to improve the security of your home wireless LAN.