Router Security Questions...

BUZ

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I'm not sure as to the encryption question. but for a determined hacker with the right equipment, it could be done...as to the length of time to hack it, that depends on the hardware sophistication/knowledge of the hacker.

There's one more step you can take for securing your wireless and that is to turn off the SSID broadcast.
 

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I'm not sure as to the encryption question. but for a determined hacker with the right equipment, it could be done...as to the length of time to hack it, that depends on the hardware sophistication/knowledge of the hacker.

There's one more step you can take for securing your wireless and that is to turn off the SSID broadcast.

Thanks for the info!




Anyone else have any info in regards to password length needed for 256-bit encryption?
 

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  • OS
    Windows 8
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Check the wikipedia page about WPA here: Wi-Fi Protected Access - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look under the WPA2 heading and security. A 256-bit key is derived from the passphrase you enter.

If your password consists of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation then an adversary would have to check about 94 different possibilities for each character of your password. So for a 2 character password it would be 94*94, 3 characters would be 94*94*94 and so on.

Here is a link from the GRC website which discusses relative security of different password lengths. https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm
 

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A determined hacker can get into ANY wifi network , even if you turn off the SSID broadcast , turning off that actually just causes YOU more hassle than the protection it gives , some hackers will actually target wifi networks that don't broadcast their SSID (yes you can easily scan and find wifi networks that don't broadcast it) just for giggles.

It just depends on how determined they are and what needs protecting on your LAN , even restricting the MAC addresses which have access to your LAN can be got around by spoofing any of them on an external device, it's all a case of how far do you go before it's inconvenience outweighs the protection you get from doing something.
 

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^^ Thanks for the info, much appreciated!


I forgot to mention that my SSID is 20 + random charters, the routers radio broadcast is always disabled at night and also turned on/off throughout the day. I'm just wondering if I can get away with a total random passphrase of say 16 or even 32 characters and still have the full 256-bits of encryption? Shorter passphrase would make it easier when friends and family come over and want to connect to my network.

I may sound paranoid and well I am since I use this for my business. Thanks again for the comments so far!
 

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  • OS
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    8 GB
I think, maybe, possibly, that with WPA2-PSK you get 256 bit encryption as long as your password is at least 8 digits of ASCII text:

From Wiki: "Pre-shared key mode (PSK, also known as Personal mode) is designed for home and small office networks that don't require the complexity of an 802.1X authentication server.[SUP][9][/SUP] Each wireless network device encrypts the network traffic using a 256 bit key. This key may be entered either as a string of 64 hexadecimal digits, or as a passphrase of 8 to 63 printable ASCII characters.[SUP][10][/SUP] If ASCII characters are used, the 256 bit key is calculated by applying the PBKDF2 key derivation function to the passphrase, using the SSID as the salt and 4096 iterations of HMAC-SHA1.[SUP][11][/SUP]

So, you will have 256 bit encryption. Maybe...?
 

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