Imagine this scenario: Under the cover of night, a thief parks outside your house. Without ever leaving his car, he breaks into your computer’s wireless network and makes off with your credit card information. The crime is performed with such stealth that you’ll remain blissfully unaware of the theft, until fraudulent charges appear on your credit card.
Welcome to the brave new world of wardriving. Wardriving is a hacking practice in which fraudsters tap into unsecured wireless networks and use them for their criminal activities. Wardriving heralds the end of crime as we know it. Glove-fingered lock-picking break-ins are way last century: cyber criminals can glean far more from simply sitting in a neighborhood parking lot, laptop in hand.
Most households never turn on the wireless network security features, enabling wardrivers to drive around the neighborhood and tap into any active Internet connection within 200 feet away. And while hacksters don’t really go after your personal credit card information like in the hypothetical example above, your wireless network could be commandeered to aid in generalized identity and credit card theft or in shady practices, which fraudsters want to remain untraceable, like email spamming or child pornography.
One of the largest identity theft cases in U.S. history involved wardriving. A ring of 11 hacksters used a security weakness in the wireless networks of retailers TJ Maxx and Sports Authority to steal the credit card information of over 40 million people. Since the break-in, retailers have been required to crack down on their network security and run encryption programs to protect the data they process.
Experts point out that individuals are at far less risk than large retailers. For a wardriver, going after a single homeowner’s credit card information would be like casting a fishing line off the deck of a commercial fishing vessel. However, if you use wireless technology at home, you’re still advised to take steps to protect yourself. According to estimates, 60% of homes in any given neighborhood are unprotected. Here are 7 tips to secure your wireless network and protect yourself from wardriving fraudsters:
1. Turn your network off when you aren’t using it. Leaving a wireless network up and running 24/7 is like leaving the door to your house unlocked when you sleep or are away at work. When the network isn’t on, it can’t be accessed.
2. Change your default information. Identical make and model wireless systems come with the same default usernames and passwords. Cyber-criminals do their homework, and if you haven’t changed your default information, they will have no problem logging in.
3. Change the network name or SSID (“service set identifier”) of your wireless network. Leaving the default name (“Linksys,” for example) informs hackers up front as to what kind of system they are dealing with. Be sure not to give your network a name that can be traced back to you, such as your name, address, or other personal information.
4. Disable your network’s SSID broadcast. For restaurants, coffee shops, and other establishments that offer free Wi-Fi access to their customers, this feature is highly useful. For private wireless users, it’s an open invitation to hackers.
5. Make use of WPA/WEP encryption options. By turning on these security programs, anyone accessing computers using the network will be required to provide encrypted passwords before gaining access to wireless connection points.
6. Strategically position your wireless router. By setting up your Wi-Fi signal in the center of your home, you can avoid long-range signal leakage in any one particular direction. Contrastingly, setting up a wireless network along an external wall or window leaves more of the signal exposed.
7. Switch from a dynamic to a static IP address. Automatically assigned dynamic IP addresses, frequently used by home-operated wireless systems, are more easily accessible to hackers.
