Leaving a connection open?

[-Skye]

How dangerous is it to leave a guest network open for say 2/3 hours while I used my DS-Lite. I dug it up recently and upon trying to connect to our wireless I discovered the ds lite is only wep compatible, so I head on over to the router to setup a guest network to use for it and sadly enough I see this

http://i.imgur.com/bxOxp.png

I guess it means this router can't use WEP or something along those lines, so I see my other choice is to leave it unsecured for a while. What real dangers are their to doing this? Do any of you do it?

[vesseblah]

WPA2-PSK is the default sane setting for home users. It's really hard (but not impossible) to crack and don't need any authentication servers or complicated setup.

WEP is the insecure "old shit" which is probably the reason why it's disabled.

[endersblade]

Guess that depends entirely on your area. Are you afraid of someone jacking your connection or something? And a router that can't do WEP? That's bizarre. Maybe it can't as a security feature for the guest connection.

I to was highly annoyed that the DS can't use anything but WEP. Now you have me curious, I haven't fired up my Wii in ages, and I'm on a WPA2 wireless now, I wonder if my Wii can see it...

[-Skye]

I'm just concerned someone may connect and download some things on the far end of the illegal disgusting scale and it get tracked to us and we get into crap. I tried looking at the primary connection and it also cannot be swapped to WEP :C

[vesseblah]

I tried looking at the primary connection and it also cannot be swapped to WEP :C

Can it be changed to WPA2(PSK) instead? Like I said above, WEP is old shit and should never be used.

[-Skye]

As I've said the DS lite can only connect to WEP networks or networks with no security. I've tried connecting it to all the others I can.

[vesseblah]

I guess WEP is disabled on the router because it's unsafe. Do you need internet connection on the DS for something important while you're at home? I'd just not bother using the internet connection on it at all if the other option is turning off WLAN security.

How safe or unsafe it is depends entirely on your neighborhood, it's probably fine keeping it open few hours here and there as long as you make sure your home network is secured and everything requires passwords (no open fileshares in LAN etc).


One thing you can do is configure the router to whitelist devices by MAC address. That way nobody outside can connect to your router, but it's still open for eavesdropping.

[Deleted]

What about on the main wifi connection options and not the "guest wireless network" network connection?

[majinsnake]

For a couple hours, I doubt someone will even connect to your router to do fraudulent things in that time. You leave it unsecure ALL the time, then yes someone would connect to you. Better safe than sorry though.

@vesseblah. People use internet on the DS usually to play online with others usually.

@Sythari Connecting to all other securities above WEP will not work no matter what. You are better off doing MAC ADDRESS Filtering like Vasseblah said. People could still fake a mac address to what is allowed on your router, but again it depends on neighborhood and such. I doubt many would go through all that trouble just to connect to your network and do things.

[Cyanotical]

anyone who can crack wep can bypass mac filtering in about 2 seconds, so between the two options, to most users, a mac filtered open connection will just look like broken wifi, but neither option is good

[Void666]

If someone is serious about hacking your network they will. Even WPA2 keys can be cracked in like 4 hrs on Linux with Reaper WPS

---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 04:10 AM ----------

Or download this http://download.cnet.com/Virtual-WiF...-75599199.html. Simple to setup

[Cyanotical]

If someone is serious about hacking your network they will. Even WPA2 keys can be cracked in like 4 hrs on Linux with Reaper WPS

reaper only cracks WPS enabled connections, and there is no average time, it can take as little as a second, or as long as 50 hours

WPA hacking is still much more complex than most 13 year old wannabe hackers are generally capable of, nor do they typically have the money for the compute needed

[lordmatthias]

Honestly I would not worry about it too much. If you are really that worried about it see if you can setup a Mac Address filter on your router. This will allow you to only allow approved system connect to your router. That way even if you don't have a password on the connection it is still secure.[COLOR="red"]

You will have to figure out what the MAC address is on your DS, you can either fine this through the DS or you can connect it to your open connection (before you enable to mac address filter) and see which device pops onto the network through your router GUI.

[Cyanotical]

aireplay-ng -1 0 -e SSID -a 00:14:6C:7E:40:80 -h 00:0F:B5:88:AC:82 ath0

that is one of the commands in hacking wifi, to bypass MAC filtering, all i need to do is change the MAC after -h to match an address already associated with the AP

because it's so easy, MAC filtering is not a valid security option, it is simply an additional layer to prevent casual passer-bys from gaining access

you can try it, but the best option is to simply go without internet, there are plenty of options for creating an isolated guest wifi, but they are probably out of the scope of what most home users are capable of