Wireless security breach - how?

There I was, quietly browsing this forum, when I noticed my wireless connection had disconnected. On investigation, I found that the router security was open, the router password was blank, and 4 or 5 unknown DHCP clients were listed.

Prior to this, the security was 128-bit WEP, there WAS a password set, and remote admin was NOT enabled. Funnily enough, when I rebooted the router, the admin password came back!

Needless to say, I have now changed the password, increased security to WAP-PSK and hidden the SID, but I would dearly like to know how this security breach was carried out, as I thought I was fully protected. (PM me if you don't want to encourage other 'script kiddies').

The router is a Belkin.

[Paul K]

Running standard firmware? Could be a hardware reset on the router, did it lose any other settings?

[deadite66]

WEP is a horribly broken encryption, a recent development shows it can be broken in a few minutes.
you should be quite safe with WPA.
you can use this page https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm to make nice randomised passwords.

Yes - standard firmware. I don't think it lost any other settings, and the odd thing is that the password I had set came back when I rebooted. Also, it seems very suspicious that there were 4 or 5 'freeloaders' connected when I checked, as this was within a few minutes of me being disconnected.

---------- Post added at 09:26 ---------- Previous post was at 09:17 ----------

Originally Posted by deadite66

WEP is a horribly broken encryption, a recent development shows it can be broken in a few minutes.
you should be quite safe with WPA.
you can use this page https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm to make nice randomised passwords.

Cheers - I guess that's what happened then. They cracked the WEP encryption AND the password then switched off security. Still intrigued that the password came back on reboot, but hopefully I'm more secure now.