Unsecured Wireless Home Routers : Unsecured Wireless Home Routers By : Nick Porlides
Slide 2 : Wireless networks have many advantages. Unfortunately they have some disadvantages as well. Firewalls and wireless security such as WEP and WPA keys make home wireless networks secure enough but it’s unsecured wireless routers that have problems. There are people out there that can and will take advantage of this. This creates a quite an ethical situation.
Main Concerns : Main Concerns Ease of Access (default passwords)
Security of Information
Bandwidth Leaching
Ease of Access : Ease of Access Just sitting in your home how many wireless routers show up? Depending on the area it could be a few or it could be many, some of which are unsecured.
When an ISP (Brighthouse, Verizon, etc) set up a wireless home internet connection they get it up and running, that’s about it.
Any one who knows how to use Google can access default usernames/passwords for a specific router. EX: http://www.routerpasswords.com/
Security of Information : Security of Information Users on the same network can have access to shared folders.
Network monitoring tools, (such as Wireshark) can pick up HUGE amounts of information.
Slide 6 : EX: Wireshark
Bandwidth Leaching : Bandwidth Leaching Is your blazing fast 10mbps cable internet seem slow? Could be that someone has access to your network and is downloading large files online using p2p (torrents, limewire, etc)
Those that know what they are doing can actually “hijack” the router and actually limit the original users bandwidth.
Secure your wireless router!!! : Secure your wireless router!!!