Chapter 6. Wireless Network Snoops: Lock Down Your Wi-Fi Network

In this chapter

• What Is a Wireless Home Network?

• Why Wi-Fi Scares Security Experts

• The Snoopers: Bandwidth Bandits, Wireless Hackers, and Wardrivers

• Damage a Snooper Can Do

• Secure Your Wi-Fi with WEP and WPA

• Stop the Scottish (and Everyone Else) with MAC Address Filtering

• Emergency Lock-downDealing with an Attack

• Router Security Tweaks that Take 10 Minutes

• How to Turn off File Sharing

Wireless networks are everywhere. You might even have one in your home. If you do, did you know you've just left an electronic door into your home wide open to anyone who walks by? In this chapter you learn the risks posed by a wireless network and how to lock it down so no one pulls up to the curb outside your house and tiptoes through your personal data. Plus, you get to learn about exciting encryption technologies such as WEP and WPA and how to scramble data so well as it flies through the ether that people can't read your bank statements or your grandma's top secret cookie recipe.