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Richard Brown wrote: > > Also, how secure is an encrypted wifi network please? How is it encrypted? The standard encryption "WEP" is trivially simple to crack by modern standards, and you can download a Linux LiveCD that will do the attack for you, no "brains" beyond ensuring your wireless card is compatible with the live CD, and burning a bootable CD required. Someone said of attacks against WEP that they are now so efficient it is easier to crack WEP than to get the user to type the key into their computer. Probably a slight exaggeration, but it makes the point. Also WEP is vulnerable because it is a shared key system, so anyone who connected once knows the key, ex-employees, contractors, visitors etc, till it is changed. I'm not familiar with the strength of WPA and other encryption algorithms used in more modern wireless networks, but I dare say Google knows. How secure does it have to be? I've helped paranoid folk lock down wireless lans to individual Mac addresses, and such like, not infallible, but it stops the idle cracker owning your lan without dedicated effort. If someone is going to put that sort of effort in to getting in to the network, you probably don't want wireless, and you want a security guard 24x7, assuming it is worth protecting the data that much (sometimes it isn't). -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html