Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Lately I've been noticing some disturbing "changes" in my connectivity on my wireless laptop and my mothers desktop PC. We're both experiencing supicious frequent losses of connectivity between the hours of 7-8am, 3-6pm and 9-12pm. I have a really horrible feeling someone has hacked into our wireless network and might be piggybacking on our connection and downloading but am absolutely too novice to know where to begin in looking it up.

What's the best "guide" to check the modem logs (or whatever they would be called) for a girl who isn't even moderately intermediate with wireless networking? I really want to get this sorted out and find out if it's true because the connection is shocking and on 10mb it shouldn't take twenty minutes to download a 2.4mb png file. Can't even stream movies from lovefilm without having to buffer every ten seconds...

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

lol....

What security do you currently have for your wireless?
What you will want to use is ~WPA2, have a difficult password, nothing easy to guess.
Your network should be set up with static ip's, with Mac access only.

For checking logs etc you will need to log into the router...for example netgear routers are routerlogin.net and it should be easy enough to navigate through the menu's...

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Should it? Mine isn't.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

This is just a general rant and by no means directed at the OP.

But i still can't believe how many people still have no security on their wireless networks! It doesn't take a genius to set security up :fit:

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

What router make and model do you have? If we know that we may be able to locate a guide that will walk you through setup of wireless security.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Well if you can do it... ;)

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

:welcome: to CF
I would have though it unlikely that even if someone were borrowing your wireless that they would cripple to desktop as well. More likely an ISP issue - are you on Virgin or an ADSL line (connected to a BT phone socket).
First thing - do you know what make / model of router?
Second - what version of Windows on the two PC's?

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Exactly.
It's much more likely to be a service related issue.
"Horrible feelings" aren't really a good basis for troubleshooting a problem.

A better place to start would be to connect your modem and PC directly (ie. No router) and take some speed measurements, compare that to what's happening with router included.
At which point, chances are, you'll probably discover that you're in a congested/over-subscribed area, just the like the rest of us!

Get some help setting up your router's security properly anyway, then you shouldn't need to worry about that.
You may need to take care of some stuff like updating the router's firmware and your operating system's ability to handle the latest security protocols (WPA), depending on how new/old/up-to-date your set-up is.
Or it might be as simple as changing a few settings and entering a few numbers.

There's a gargantuan amount of information out here in WWW land.
You can get started by typing something like "router security' or 'router configuration' into Google!

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Perhaps the first thing we need to clarify is what the OP means by "loss of connectivity". Connectivity between PCs and the router? The router and the modem? The modem and the outside world?

I'm confused because there is also mention of a slow connection (which is definitely not a loss of connection)...

Ed

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

It`s been said many times before but hiding & restricting Mac addresses etc is completely pointless if you do have some naughty neighbour determined to access your network.
The WPA/2 with as long and complicated a password as possible is about the only thing stopping a determined piggybacker. The rest is probably as much use as WEP and that`s about as useful as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.


I can still empathise with many of those who dont have a clue but when they`ve used computers and internet for years & years though then they need the proverbial slap with a big wet fish.:)

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

In the router pages there should be an ATTACHED devices or equiv. That should tell anyone if there is a user attaching themselves to your network.

The modem log itself won't show you anything apart from if the modem is losing the whole connection.. You could try posting the log (MAC/Serials removed) and the up/down power levels with the SNR level.

It could be anything from someone using your wireless to a faulty connection to simple over subscription.. checking/posting what I've asked should help the guys on here help at least point you in the right direction.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

MAC filtering and static IPs provide virtually no security except to prevent only casual borrowing of somebody's bandwidth. Somebody who knows what they're doing will work around these security measures in no time at all.

If WPA/WPA2 is turned on then MAC filtering and static IPs are unnecessary (for security purposes at least).

Ed

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

It could be as innocent as the person next door has a wireless router using the same channel as GratuitousViolet but only turns it on when required, usually during the times stated in the first post.

A change of channel would soon check this out.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

That was my first thought. The wireless channels are very heavily loaded these days with practically every house having Internet and most being none technical prefer wireless and don't want to be bothered running wires erverywhere. .

Try downloading (for free) Xirrus WiFi inspector.

http://www.xirrus.com/library/downlo...Setup1.0.1.exe

It will show your wireless neighbours and the channel they are using. Check at these busy periods to see who pops up and move channel away from them. There are 13 in total (I think).

If as you say you are not familiar with wireless, then I can guess you took it out of the box and it worked. As a result you may have:

1) No encryption switched on.

2) Have left it (like many others) on the default channels of 13 for most routers - hence you are literally not alone on channel 13.

Hope that is some help.
WTP

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Static ip as in, assign ip's through your router to each mac. Yes Virgin use dynamic which rarely changes anyway but with the router options use a lan ip setup with Mac address filtering as well.

Wpa/2 is secure with a good password. For the casual "piggybacker" your network will be secure. Mac address filtering is good to have, Yes you could clone a mac and kick people off their network but for the ordinary fools around you this will not be done. A vast amount of people "piggyback" on unsecure connections.

The Mac address filtering is a good backup as well if someone did happen to gain access to your network by bruteforcing the password.

Besides any good network that does have wireless will have access restriected to mac's along with the added security of WPA/2.

My advice dont listen to the scare mongering that it still not safe..
Lets face nothing is really safe, anything can be cracked given time and money....

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

While you're at it - setting up security (if not already done) make sure that you change the routers default admin password too. ;)

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Another simple solution, if your router has a 'Attached Devices' option check what devices are connected.

You should know what devices are yours.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Whilst I don't dispute that there are benefits, in some circumstances, to assigning static IPs on the LAN I can see few (if any) benefits from a security perspective. And I've no idea what it has to do with the way VM allocate IPs to devices on their network... :confused:

With a strong password it will be secure against determined hackers as well as casual piggybackers.

If it's a good password it won't be crackable in a realistic timescale with a bruteforce attack. Quote from http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2724

"For example, a 15 character password made up of uppercase, lowercase, digits and common punctuation is highly resistant to a brute-force attack. Even at the rate of 100,000,000 password attempts a second, cracking that could take 3.5 x 10^12 years."

Anyone with the patience and the technology to bruteforce a good WPA2 password (if such a person existed) will find MAC spoofing incredibly trivial to circumvent. In this situation it provides no backup whatsoever - nobody is going to go to the trouble of cracking a WPA2 password and then give up when they see there's MAC filtering to workaround.

WPA2 is secure. It's certainly secure enough for any home network. MAC filtering offers no meaningful additional security. True, anything can be cracked given enough time, but with WPA2 we're not talking months, or even years. With current technology it would take substantially longer than the universe has existed for.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

It could be that the op is being forced to disconnect to allow data for the dictionary attack to occur, however as Ed mentioned, using a random password with WPA or WPA2 is enough
I also agree that MAC filtering is useless and probably dangerous, giving a false sense of security : http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=43&tag=col1;post-127 , number one in the list of six dumbest ways of securing a wireless network.

I use a 32 character randomly generated key and keep it on a USB key and transport that between computers while setting them up. It's worth noting that a ten character password would take 400~ years to crack with a single PC. Never use christian/surnames either as keys since there's plenty of dictionary lists that have comprehensive coverage of names.

http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/.../generator.php is a WPA key generator if you don't feel random enough ~

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

i never secure my connection and rarely get any one on it BUT if you don't want people on there just follow the security set up guide for your router they are mostly fairly easy to follow with the hardest part being deciding on your password

long password and frequent changes too

there are some rather easy to use programs out there that can break these codes rather quicker than that 400 years ;)

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

What 400 years? The only timescale that I can see in this thread is in my previous post, which is 3.5 * 10 to the power of 12 years. That's an awful lot longer than 400 years.

And what programs? WEP is relatively easy to crack (although still more difficult than MAC filtering) because the alorithm used to generate the encryption keys is borked. WPA2, which is what most people are recommending, is as far as I know still considered secure.

If you know of software that can crack WPA without using a bruteforce approach (which would be the only way of doing it in a reasonable time period with current (and probably future) technology) I'd like to know. Examples please!

Ed

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

The poster is probably referring to Elcomsoft wifi key recovery software which uses the GPU and distributed computing to brute-force, a 10 character or greater key would still take a very long time to crack and probably wouldn't be worth the effort since there's so many people still running WEP or using dictionary attackable WPA pass-phrases.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

If so then they should read the article I referenced in my last but one post - that is the software it talks about.

Ed.

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Silly Man. I could come to near your house and download tonnes of kiddy porn should I wish thanks to your insecure WiFi network.

Silly man and you would never know until the Police smash down your door.

Silly man indeed.

Fantastic advice!

WTP

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

Possibly even sharing a couple of folders you could easily hide some handy copies in eh:erm:

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

and ?

1 no mater what people try to tell you you wont be responsible unless it can be shown you knew they were doing so

2 if tons was being downloaded i would soon notice when i checked the modem logs

3 as i have loads of computers coming and going i really cant be bothered to have to set it up for each one


and BT think its a great idea http://www.btfon.com/

Re: Concerned about "Piggybackers".
 

I must confess..I was a piggybacker once..several times in fact

I blame my youth, and my parents.

And of course, everyone did it, you got bored..someone shouted "war"
Next thing you know, if you were lucky, someone jumps on your shoulders and fighting ensued.

i'm not going to apologise..I enjoyed..:)