airport detects another network

firehcfirehc
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
using snow white airport base station on my 15 FP imac,

recently detects 3 networks in the neighbourhood,

i presume they can detect me too.

my questions:

how to avoid my network being hooked up by other;

how can i tell if my network is hooked up;

if got hooked up, can they see/retreive my files?



thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    WEP password it, though that won't really keep you safe.

    Disable any sharing: ftp, samba, ssh, http, etc.



    802.11b is inherintly insecure. As long as you use it it will broadcast itself out to the world in a relatively insecure manner. If you firewall yourself, disable or password all share services you are running, and enable WEP you'll be doing all you can conceivable do.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    In addition to WEP:



    1) Use a non-trivial network name / BSSID

    2) "Create a closed network" so the basestation doesn't publicly broadcast its availability.

    3) Use MAC address filtering via "Access Control"
  • Reply 3 of 8
    newnew Posts: 3,244member
    and use encryption...
  • Reply 4 of 8
    nijiniji Posts: 288member
    one question i have always had:

    if you name yr network, and set it so that a person would need to know that exact network name (SSID), i presume that no one can even see that there is a network that exists, is that correct?

    so, even if iStumbler or something is used for warchalking, they cant detect that a network exists, is that correct?
  • Reply 5 of 8
    firehcfirehc Posts: 368member
    thanks,

    but what is mac address filtering??
  • Reply 6 of 8
    chychchych Posts: 860member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by firehc

    thanks,

    but what is mac address filtering??



    The MAC address (not mac) is the hardware address for your network card, it's a string of hex. It is globally unique, only your machine in the world has the MAC address you have, so filtering can be done on this.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    firehcfirehc Posts: 368member
    thanks!
  • Reply 8 of 8
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by niji

    one question i have always had:

    if you name yr network, and set it so that a person would need to know that exact network name (SSID), i presume that no one can even see that there is a network that exists, is that correct?

    so, even if iStumbler or something is used for warchalking, they cant detect that a network exists, is that correct?



    No. If an attacker uses any 'sophisticated' tool, that places his 802.11b card into monitor mode, he will be able to pick any packet out of the air and gather your SSID, MAC, IP, and, eventually, WEP password. In monitor mode the attacker never actively broadcasts, unlike iStumbler, you'd never know an 'attack' ever occurred.



    These are the problems of 802.11b
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