Project 3 - Securing your wi-fi

Articles: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1152933,00.asp
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/wirelesssecurity/tp/wifisecurity.htm

I have to say this: WEP is laughably easy to crack, anyone who uses it to try and secure their wi-fi is wasting their time, if you want anything like security you must use WPA2. The only thing that WEP will protect you from is people looking for free internet with no hassle at all.

These sites both mentioned a very good basic thing to do, change the default username and password. As they said, those can be accessed by anyone. During a networking event I went to in speaking with the presenter he mentioned that a surprising number of professional network administrators used the default username/password. This is a very basic thing to do and will help a lot in securing your network.

They both also brought up encrypting your network, however the extremetech site only ever mentions WEP, which as I said is practically useless in security. compnetworking mentioned both WEP and WPA, and brought up a good point. That is that not all wi-fi enabled devices can use all three of the basic protocols (WEP, WPA, WPA2, in ascending order of security) and that you may need to use a lesser one to accommodate all of your devices.

Again, both brought up changing the default SSID, though this doesn't actually do anything to secure your network unless you're running WPA(2), a default SSID marks your network as easy to crack and therefore more likely to be targeted by hackers, as mentioned by the compnetworking article. If you are running WPA(2) the encrypted password that is first sent involves the SSID in its computation, so if you run a common SSID a hacker may use a precomputed rainbow table to try a bunch of prehashed passkeys rather than having to compute them as they attack.

Both articles brought up turning on MAC filtering, so that only manually keyed in devices could access the network, and they both mentioned that hackers can spoof MAC addresses, however, especially in the case of home networks, it is unlikely a hacker will take the time to do so.

Both articles again bring up disabling your SSID broadcast, to make your network slightly harder to connect to.

Only the compnetwork article brings up disabling auto-connect, which isn't too big of a deal. This has nothing to do with the actual security of your network, so much as to prevent your computer from becoming accessible through someone else's unsecured network.

Both articles bring up turning off DHCP to prevent ease of access by intruders, this makes it slightly more difficult to access the network, and the more devices you have the more work you need to do to connect them all to the network.

Only the compnetwork article mentions turning on firewalls on your devices, though as it says, most modern equipment comes with built-in firewalls and making sure they are turned on is not a big concern.

Both mention placing the router away from windows and the like to prevent a good signal from leaving the house, if intruders don't see a good signal they are much less likely to break into the network.

The compnetwork article mentions to turn off the network entirely during extended periods of downtime, obviously not something to do in the business setting, but if you take a vacation from home you may as well to prevent unauthorized access while you are away.

A major notable difference between the articles is that the extremetech article focuses more on buisness's wi-fi security and anti-wardriving (the act of driving around finding networks and breaking into them) security, while compnetwork focuses more on the home.

Project 1 - Buying a computer

Well, I like customize-ability so rather than straight up buy a stock computer and list reasons, I'm going to go part by part. I'll be using Newegg.com listings for prices, ect. The links to everything as I accessed them on 8/28/2010 will be posted at the bottom in the order discussed. Prices do not include shipping or any taxes not included in the listed price. $0.99 has been rounded up to the next dollar.


Well, first off the motherboard. I decided to go with the ASUS 890GX to start the build off. This will give compatibility with DDR3 RAM, and an AM3 socket, and costing 140$ it's not so bad. Since it's an ASUS board we'll be looking at AMD cpus, which come around as better for gaming, my primary purpose for this computer. Another reason for this choice is that ASUS/AMD/ATI equipment tend to be cheaper than their Intel/NVIDIA counterparts.

Now when I say AMD cpus tend to be better for gaming, the reason is the newer Intel processor's biggest thing is hyper-threading, something the vast majority of games (and many programs) ignore, and having it will do you little to no good.

So, for the processor I went with the Phenom ii 965, it's a quad-core 3.4ghz processor, and so will do nicely for running games, with a few background programs I often like to keep running. It also comes with a nice stock heat sink according to the feedback comments on Newegg, however should it prove inadequate another could easily be purchased to take its place. Coming in at 166$ it's a little steep, but well worth the price.

Next up: RAM. OCZ Obsidion DDR3 1600 2x2GB. It will run fast enough for most games, and should the need come up for additional RAM, the motherboard supports 4 slots and another pair can be bought. Coming in at 84$ it's a nice price for RAM.

Now a big part for gaming, the video card. The Radeon 4870 should more than suffice with power, and is compatible with direct x 10.1, compatibility with dx11 isn't so much of an issue right now, as very few (if any, none to my knowledge) require dx11 graphics support. This comes in at 130$, a fairly nice price.

Now a very necessary component: the hard drive. For the sake of never running out of space and having about the fastest consumer hard drive: Samsung's 1TB hard drive coming in at 60$. I think this is fairly self-explanatory.

The CD/DVD drive,  a Lifes Good black drive. 20$, again self-explanatory.

Now for the show off piece, the case. Antec's 900 Black steel tower with 650w EA650 power supply, the psu is more than enough to cover the machine, and the tower looks cool. The bundle comes in at 150$, nice and low for two pieces.

The monitor now, ASUS has a good rep for those so let's go with the ASUS VW266H, it's a 25.5" monitor with a recommended resolution of 1920x1200. Very high resolution, very good looking, very good gaming. This piece comes in at 290$.

Now keyboard and mouse, I'm going to go with a Razer bundle on the pair, the mouse has 5 buttons, very good and the keyboard is showy, also nice. This pair comes in at 125$

Of course, one cannot forget the Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium should do to top everything off, coming in at 100$

This all comes out to 1265$.

MotherBoard
Processor
RAM
Video Card
Hard Drive
Dvd Drive
Case/PSU
Monitor
Combo Keyboard/Mouse
Windows 7 Home Premium