Page 4
Wi-Fi Defense
Con tinued from page 3
me to the other side of the house,
this one pumps up the signal. When
I took my notebook in my car and
even parked across the street I could
get a signal. It is 802.11g but with a
maximum wireless signal rate of up
to 108Mbps.
You may have
heard of “war
driving.” It is people
driving around with
laptops and antenna
devices looking for
unsecured networks.
In one test of driving
around in Las Vegas,
they found over 100
open networks in just
a few minutes. Some
carry GPS units and mark them for
upload to websites. Pair it up with
software such as Network Stumbler.
It scans for networks roughly every
second and logs all the networks it
runs into—including the real SSIDs,
the AP’s MAC address, the best
signal-to-noise ratio encountered,
and the time you crossed into the
network’s space. Most war drivers
do it for kicks but some have more
harmful intentions. It is more than
just sharing the bandwidth—it will
slow your performance.
What people may not understand
is that if someone else starts using
your network to browse wherever
they want on the Internet, it’s going
to come back to your IP address. In
one instance, a Los Angeles man
pleaded guilty to distributing
pornography spam e-mails. He sent
them out using other people’s Wi-Fi
connections that he accessed from
inside his car. In 2003, a man in
Toronto was arrested for
downloading child
pornography using other
people’s unsecured
wireless networks.
Once Wi-Fi defense is
installed, it scans your
network and presents to
you a list of devices
(computers) and ask you
if they are Friend, Foe,
or Unknown. It gives
you their IP address,
MAC address, Net
Name, and
manufacturer. From that
information, you can figure out if
they are Friend or Foe to allow them
on the network. If Unknown you
certainly don’t want them. If
someone need tries to piggy-back
onto your signal, a pop-up window
will alert you and ask you if they are
Friend, Foe, or Unknown. It worked
on both my 802.11g and b cards. If
you find in the future you want to
change the
classification of
visitor (you
were mistaken,
or they just
ticked you off)
you can edit the
visitor or delete
them from the
list.
Clicking on
Wireless
Security gives
you options for Notification, having
it tell you when someone new is
scanned on the network. The
Security tab lets you enable router
security. Wi-Fi Defense is truly just
a scanning program that will tell you
when someone is accessing your
network until you enable the router
security. I changed my setting for
my main computer from friend to
foe. It only changed the color setting
but did not kick it off. If you are
using a wireless access point in
conjunction with a router (two
separate pieces of equipment), make
sure you put the address of your
access point into the Access Point
Address field on the Network tab.
Once security is enabled, if you
need to add new visitors (friends)
then you can click on the Add
Friend To Network wizard.
You can run reports on visitors to
see when they came on and how
long they were there. Network
report shows the MAC address,
when they were first there and the
amount of time on the network.
Visitors will be listed in one of two
groups—either Connected or Not
Connected. The Vulnerability
Report shows a chart of how many
hours each day a foe was detected
on your network in the time period
you select.
Conclusion
At $29.95 it is a good deal. This
will help people make their
networks more secure.
http://www.otosoftware.com
