How Secure Is Your Laptop from Hackers?

There is a hobby known as "wardriving." This is where people drive around with a laptop, special antennae, and software and park in different neighbourhoods, hoping to hack into some resident's unsecure wireless laptop. Usually, these people mean no harm and most of them are looking to piggy back off someone's internet connection for free. More malicious hackers are interested in doing this to hack into someone's wireless laptop to look for financial or personal information(credit card number, etc.,) to committ identity theft or financial fraud. Some malicious hackers may upload virus laden files into laptops or delete important files that may eventually cause the operating system to become inoperable and for the laptop crash. Then, you are left with the task of picking up the pieces which involves paying a computer shop a lot of money to fix the problem or spending lots of time formatting your computer, reinstalling the operating system, running all the patches, reinstalling all your important software, and reinstalling any computer protection software.


So what can you do to prevent this in the first place? Protect your laptop by taking the steps outlined below.


Quick Wireless LAN Security tips from the the experts:

1. Change the default Admin password on your Access Point (this includes the webinterface)
2. Change the your default SSID (network name)
3. Disable the SSID broadcast option
4. Enable MAC address filtering on your Access Point
5. Turn off DHCP. If not possible, restrict DHCP leases to the MAC addresses of your Wireless clients only
6. Refrain from using the default subnet
7. Use the highest level of WEP/WPA(2)
8. Firewall your Wireless Network segment (separate segment and packet filtering)
9. Use a switch for connecting the Access Point to other network devices, not a hub
10. Encrypt your wireless traffic using a VPN
11. Further, use encryption protocols for applications where possible (TLS/https, ssh, etc)
12. Think about using a proxy with access control for outgoing requests
13. Enable logging, and check your (wireless) log files regularly
14. Test your wireless security using wardriving tools


Just a couple of things here. WAP is far more secure than WEP and there are many freely available hacker tools that can be used to hack the WEP encrypted password and hack into a laptop with wireless connection, so I strongly advise you to use the WAP protocal if you are seriously concerned about wireless internet laptop security. Another thing, there is a common myth that a router is a be all and end all "firewall" that will fully secure your internet connection. Many people will only use a router believing this and it is simply not true. A router will protect you from inbound intrusion attempts but will not do anything with repect to intrusions associated with outbound intrusions. So you need to use both a router and software firewall regardless of whether you use a a desktop or laptop. Personally, I found ZoneAlarm Wirless to give me the best protection on my wireless Internet connection and cause me the least problems. For those who don't believe that a software firewall is needed if you use a router, test your defenses by running the firewall leak tests/programs(using your router only) at: http://www.pcflank.com/pcflankleaktest.htm or
http://www.firewallleaktester.com and see what happens.


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