© 2000 Randy Glasbergen

Why do we encrypt our wireless networks?  To keep the spies from watching us of course, but seriously there are several good reasons to encrypt your home wireless networks.  The most obvious one being that anyone can connect to an unsecured network.

If you are going to spend good money each month for your internet service, why would you give it to your neighbors for free?  This is especially bad in an apartment complex, here up to 10 of your neighbors can steal your unsecured internet connection and greatly slow down your internet speed.  But there are far greater dangers to sharing your internet connection with the strangers around you.

At the top of our dangers list we have Trollers.  These are people who drive around looking for unsecured wireless networks and steal as much data as they can from the networks in hopes of finding out your personal information.

So how is this possible?  Well, in a network all data is viewable by all computers.  Now this data is fragmented and requires reassembly (this typically happens at inside the program you are using) but with enough knowledge anyone can steal passwords, bank account info and credit card info from your network.  All they need is a connection to your network, and this is where your unsecured wireless network comes into play.  The best way to stop these Trollers (and your no good neighbors) is to encrypt your network.

Right now there are two different ways to encrypt your network:

• WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
• WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access)

WEP is an older technology that has been around since the mid 90’s.  This type of encryption uses a 128-bit key to encode the data between your computer and the wireless router.  There are some downsides to using WEP to secure your network, most notably the fact that readily available cracking software can break the encryption in a matter of minutes.  The only reason that WEP is still available as an option today is because some of the older operating systems and network cards cannot handle the newer WPA.  I know for a fact that Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 and under cannot handle WPA encryption (this is yet another reason to keep your Windows Operating System up to date).

WPA and WPA2 were developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance in the early 2000’s as an answer to the security flaws in WEP.  This type of encryption uses a much stronger 256-bit encryption key which is derived by applying a PBKDF2 key derivation function to a user definable passphrase and then “Salts” the key using the wireless SSID.  Have I lost you yet?  Now do you understand why this type of encryption is much more secure?

So, what have we learned? If you want to keep your data safe from nefarious characters, encrypt your wireless network.  And use WPA2 encryption for true safety.

Next time I think I want to talk to you about the importance of password complexity.  Until then, be safe and enjoy your technology.