The idea for this article was created from a visit to the chiropractor. A good friend for a couple years, he recently expanded into his own practice and I went to go get my monthly back crack. I made a side note about networks and he brought up wireless technology. I jokingly laughed about how some people leave themselves wide open and don't lock their routers down. He stopped smiling. "What do you mean," he asked.

Ah. Well... let me tell you what you should do and why:

Despite the magic of wireless technology, it's actually nothing more than a radio station. The radio waves are a higher frequency, 2.4GHz for 802.11b (the more common of the protocols. 802.11a and 802.11g are also used, but as far as this article is concerned... we don't care), but still are just radio waves. Now, for argument sake, let's say that Arthur spends millions of dollars to buy his own radio station. He then forks out massive bucks to have a special receiver that can pick up his radio station. Happy with his purchase, he begins to air only that which he wants to hear... classical music, news updates about his stocks, his current account balance, some sexy girl telling him what a bad boy he is, etc. He mounts his receiver in his car and can listen to Arthur Radio where ever, when ever. He is happy. Happy until he turns on his TV and finds a news story detailing how some idiot is transmitting personal info across the airwaves for all to hear and evidentially that idiot is also a bad boy. Turns out a car radio can listen in to Arthur's station, and it didn't take long before people were.

Flash to you. You plug in your wireless router and run the install and are downloading porn and making online transactions before you can sneeze. It will take more than a car radio to listen in, but your next door neighbor can watch what you are doing, get your credit card number, and worse yet, use your Internet connection without you knowing. Using an Internet connection is worse than stealing credit card numbers? Yes. The FBI knocking on your door and arresting you for hacking into a government network will say the same. You can tell them you didn't do it, but they tracked the hacker to your system. Better get some soap on a rope... you're getting a girlfriend named Bubba.

How is it possible? By default, most computer components are designed to work out of the box for whatever configuration. What configuration do you have? The maker of your toy doesn't know and doesn't care. They assume getting the system working for the largest demographic is a winner... which means a Hummer can drive through your security holes. It's up to you to add in the level of security you desire. Since I'm a betting man, I will state that your router out of the box has no admin password set (or a standard default that any hacker will get in five seconds), no MAC address filtering, and no encryption. Simply by setting these three things, which will take just a couple minutes, you will remove 99.999% of the worry. Let's attack each one:

Set Your Login Password - Open that thing you are using to keep your coffee from staining your wood desk... you know... the manual. Your router has a default IP address like 192.168.x.x and now is a good time to memorize it. When you installed your router and configured your system, your computer was told to refer to that IP address as its way out to the outside world... its your gateway. It is also your way to access the administrator settings for your router. Your manual will tell you exactly how, but should be something like just typing in "http://192.168.2.1" or whatever your router's IP address is set to (your default gateway's address). Your administrator controls is usually in the form of a web page. Nice. You should be prompted for at least a password or told hit enter if you haven't set one yet. Yep... that's your default level of security. Scary. Go in and set (or change if a default is preset for you) a password pronto. Make it a good one... lots of characters, use uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. Try adding in an '$' or '!' as well. Write the password down in your manual. Keep that manual safe.

Activate MAC Filtering - Once you can log in look for something like "MAC Filter" (for my SMC router it's under the "Firewall" section). If it's not actively on, make it so and add in your computer's MAC addresses that will be accessing your wireless router. What this does is say to the router, "I don't care who they are... only these people can use the router." This will prevent Johnny next door from using your connection. If you don't know what a MAC address, or physical address, is then keep reading, otherwise skip to the encryption part.

MAC address, or physical address, is a unique serial number for your network card. Everything that connects to a network has one... and every one of them in the world is unique. When information is being sent through a network, it's the MAC address that is of concern... like your home address rather than sending a letter to, "The Smiths in Irvine, California." To find out what your MAC address is, do the following (and yes, it's for a PC):

1. Click the 'Start' button and then 'Run'
2. Type "cmd" in the window and hit 'Ok'
3. Type "ipconfig /all"

You should see something like the following:
The parts above in yellow are the MAC addresses. The part in Blue is the router's IP address to access the admin controls. As you can see, I have two network cards, one traditional but nothing plugged in, and one wireless. You want the wireless MAC addresses when adding them to your router. (and don't worry I changed my info above for security reasons)



Encrypt Your Signal - So you have set your password so no one can access your router's admin controls, and have locked everyone else out so they can't use your Internet connection. You may feel pretty safe, but people can still listen to your radio broadcast. Time to encrypt your signal so people can't tune in. Again, login and look for something like "Encryption"... under "Wireless" for me. Set it to 128-bit and type in some random garbage into the keys. Write down what you typed, because as soon as you hit 'Apply', if you are using your wireless card, you will lose all Internet connectivity. However, that's a good thing because it means it's working. You now need to access your system's interface for your wireless card and config the same keys into it's settings so your computer knows how to encrypt and decrypt the data. You should have some type of icon in the bottom right for your wireless signal strength. Double click that to access your computer's settings for your card.



That's it! You are far more secure than about 90% of the people out there. Sadly.

There's far more you can do, but that should be the life and death difference between enjoying your wireless Internet access and having a girlfriend named Bubba. Read through the manual and look at some of those other settings in the admin controls. Play around and enjoy!

--Joby Bednar