Securing Wireless Networks

A question I get asked quite a lot is "How secure are wireless networks?" and my stock answer is "As secure as you make them". For a domestic wireless network there are just two steps that you need to take to provide you with adequate security.

1. Enable encryption. There are two basic types of encryption - WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access). All wireless routers that you are likely to encounter will allow you to enable WEP. WEP can be set to afford either 64-bit or 128-bit encryption which involves entering either a 10 or 24 digit hex (base 16) number. Eircom routers (Netopia boxes) now use 128-bit encryption by default, so you will need to get the 24-digit number from the router and enter it when your PC/Laptop connects with the router. More recent routers allow the more secure WPA encryption to be deployed. There has been much written about how insecure WEP encryption is compared to WPA. Let's be clear that any encryption in a domestic wireless network is going to keep all but the most dedicated hacker out of your system. To hack into a wireless network, in a meaningful way, is not a trivial matter. First, the hacker needs to be within range of your wireless transmissions, which means that, unless it is your immediate next door neighbour that is trying to hack you, he/she will need to be camped outside your house for prolonged periods of time. Next he/she needs to be familiar with wireless hacking tools, almost all of which are Linux-based and quite cryptic to use - not something that the average 10-year old kid will be familiar with. There are "specialists" out there who can be hired to break into the wireless networks of big corporations for financial gain but, believe me, they are not particularly interested in your late night browsing habits.

2. Filter MAC addresses. All network devices (network cards, routers, access points, etc) have an individual MAC (Media Access Control) address which is a hardware address that uniquely identifies each node of a network. The MAC address consists of 6 pairs of hex numbers, such as 00-0E-23-A5-31-4C, and each is unique to a particular device. Almost all routers today allow MAC filtering to be set up for a network. This is done by entering the MAC addresses of the network cards in the PCs/laptops that you want to allow to connect to the network. Once set up only these PCs will be allowed to connect and a PC with a different MAC address will be refused admission. To check your IP address go to Start>Run, type cmd and click OK. This will open the Command Prompt window. At the flashing cursor type ipconfig /all and hit return. Your MAC address is the 12-digit hex number listed under Physical Address.

These two simple steps will provide your wireless network with all the security that you are likely to need.

More on Malware

Earlier this week we had a Compaq PC in for treatment. Basically there were a lot of things wrong with the box, most of them pointing to viral infection. The box came with McAfee Antivirus, a 90-day trial version, pre-installed by Compaq. Looking a little closer showed that the program had never performed a full system scan and the virus definitions had never been updated. Little wonder then that we found 165 infected files - it was like a who's who of the top twenty viruses out there - Netsky, Bugbear, Sober, Beagle, etc., all present and correct.

So this machine had effectively been crippled by viruses and the owner had taken no precautions to prevent this happening. Sadly this is something that we see time and time again - either through lack of knowledge or through inertia, PCs are left effectively unprotected against viral threats. When it comes to spyware the situation is even worse as the majority of home users continue to be largely unaware of its existence and how to combat it ("Yeah, I installed Adaware so I'm sorted for spyware"!!!).

I read recently that there are now nearly 2000 new malware threats per month, up from around 1000 per month in 2004. If you use a computer and that computer connects to the internet then you must understand what malware is and how to prevent it, otherwise expect to bring it to your friendly pc maintenance shop in the coming months for a rebuild. Learn more about viruses and spyware here. You have been warned ... again.

The Cutting Edge!

A customer called me recently to see if I could help him install the latest version of McAfee Internet Security (he previously had version 6 and had just purchased version 8). I asked him if he had tried the Add/Remove program in the control panel to remove version 6 before installing the new version and he replied that that's when he ran into problems. He said he contacted McAfee's technical support, whereupon he got the low down (from Brad) in an e-mail as to how "exactly" the process should go. I was so amazed at the level of complexity that McAfee expects their ordinary home users to understand and the steps that they must take to install a program that I felt I should share it with you. What I want to know is why the McAfee uninstaller that came with version 6 did not attend to all of the items listed in the e-mail that now follows. Read on, this is good!

Dear ******
please uninstall McAfee Internet Security 6 as per the steps below and then install McAfee Internet Security 8.
Uninstall Internet Security 6 from add/remove program in control panel and reboot the computer.
Delete the following folders:
i) C:\Program Files\McAfee
ii) C:\Program Files\McAfee.com
iii) C:\Document & Settings\All Users\Application Data\McAfee
iv) C:\Document & Settings\All Users\Application Data\McAfee.com
PC Medic Note: The Application Data folder mentioned above is a hidden folder - how many home users know that and how many know how to access hidden folders? Not too many is my guess.
Note : iii & iv steps to be followed in case you have Windows 2000/XP
Temp:
http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=70973
http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=68085
Start > Run > Regedit
Click OK
Make a backup ----> http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=68037
Delete following entries:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Features\
187DD389AD0152C47860E951D2CFFE09
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\
187DD389AD0152C47860E951D2CFFE09
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\MskDetector.Exe
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\MISAggregator.Exe
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\McAfee
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\McAfee.com
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\MenuOrder\StartMenu\Programs\McAfee
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McAfee
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McAfee.com
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Network Associates
Close Registry Editor
Reboot
I hope that I've answered your questions effectively. If not, feel free to contact support again. Please include all previous correspondence when replying.
Regards,
Brad
Technical Support Agent
McAfee Online Technical Support

Thanks for that, Brad. It leaves us with a warm fuzzy feeling that we're dealing with real cutting edge software!

Video Transfer: USB vs Firewire

A customer arrived in today with a problem transferring video from his DV camera to his PC without stuttering. The camera in question was a Samsung VP-D453, which seems a nice little unit, and he was using a USB cable to transfer the video to the PC. My experience with video transfer to date has been with Firewire (IEEE 1394) and I wasn't sure what to expect when using a USB cable so I dug around the web see how USB measured up to the task and garnered the following:

"In the not too distant past, there was a clear distinction between USB and FireWire. USB 1.1 could not transfer high quality DV; loosely defined as 25 frames per second (fps) with each frame being 640x480 resolution, due to USB's transfer limit of around 11Mbps (or around 1.5MB per second). Transferring DV requires a transfer rate of at least 3.6MB per second, which left FireWire as the only option due to its ability to work at 400Mbps, or up to around 50MB per second. Then along came USB 2.0 with a transfer rate of 480Mbps or around 60MB per second.

At first glance it would appear that USB 2.0 is even faster than FireWire; however speed is not the only issue when it comes to DV. One serious issue with USB 2.0 is that it can not guarantee a specified data transfer rate. This is due to USB 2.0 being a master-slave technology, which means it needs a computer's CPU to coordinate the appropriate data transfers. While not a problem when dealing with low demand peripherals such as Web cams, scanners, printers etc, digital video requires dependable performance to avoid dropping video frames.

FireWire is a much more independent technology in that it works in a peer-to-peer relationship. For this reason, many professional DV users are now able to download their video from a DV camcorder to an external hard drive without the use of a PC. Finally, and most importantly, FireWire delivers data consistently at a specific rate. If you want to work with video, even to edit the family movie, go with FireWire."

My experience with the customer's camera seemed to bear this out when we did some trials using one of our workshop machines. Firewire, in addition to allowing the camera transport mechanism to be controlled from the PC, gave the best quality picture with no stuttering in evidence.

Holiday Reading

Just got back from the holidays this afternoon after 20 hours of travel, so I'm a bit pooped and will keep this brief. This holiday I brought three non-technical books with me as reading material and I thought that you might like my thoughts on them.

First up was Nick Mason's Inside Out which tells the story of Pink Floyd from the perspective of Pink Floyd's drummer. I've been a fan of the Floyd since Dark Side of the Moon was released (and have all their work since then) but never really got to know the band's background. Mason's book is a well-written documentary of the band from its pre-Pink Floyd origins, when Syd Barrett was the creative force, right through to their reformation for last year's Live8 concert. It's basically a light read with a lot of Mason's dry wit making it quite funny in places. However, strictly one for the Pink Floyd fans. By the way, in the course of reading the book I discovered that the name Pink Floyd was a combination of the first names of two blues singers -Pink Anderson and Floyd Council - worth reading for that fact alone!

The second book I read was The Road to McCarthy, which is Pete McCarthy's follow-up to his best seller McCarthy's Bar. I would heartily recommend the latter, which is a travelogue around Ireland loosely based on the premise that you should never pass up the opportunity of having a drink in a bar that shares your name. McCarthy writes with the same pithy humour as Bill Bryson and will have you in stitches despite your best efforts to keep a straight face. Unfortunately I found the Road to McCarthy to be a lot less consistent, somewhat more contrived and more of a pastiche of travel writings than his earlier best seller. Nonetheless, a good holiday read with McCarthy's wit in abundance.


Finally there was Bob Dylan's recently published Chronicles, Volume 1. This one was a bit of a surprise. I guess I was expecting a conventional autobiography with a beginning middle and end, but found something very different. Chronicles, Volume 1 is the first of three planned volumes written by Dylan to document his life and his work and doesn't follow conventional timelines. It is, however, written in a way that reflects the poet in the man - both sophisticated and simple at the same time. Having read Volume 1 you won't know exactly what makes Bob Dylan tick but you will have some glimpses into the man, what inspired him to write some of the songs he did, and how, for him, it's all about the music. You'll also learn how Bobby Zimmerman nearly became Robert Allyn and why he became Bob Dylan. A gem of a book that should leave you looking forward to the next two volumes.

Something Fishy

So they now have wireless internet access on Baros, or do they? Well the answer is some of the people do, some of the time, and always at a price. While I'm not overly happy with having to pay $25.00 per day for the privilege of any internet access, I do get annoyed when the service is flaky. Furthermore, I've tested the download speed and the best I've managed to get is 58Kbs, a far cry from what one would consider broadband.

The fun started after we got an access code from reception, which we presumed you would enter into a default login page that would open as soon as you opened your browser. My laptop could see the Baros Wireless network as soon as I powered up but could not acquire an IP address. I tried a few things to remedy this but either their DHCP server was down or the access point in the room was flaky. I tried rebooting the access point, which is supplied by Teledex and is built into the room phone base, but this didn't resolve the problem.

In desperation I rang the island's IT supremo who said he'd be over in five minutes. Soon after I hung up I noticed that I had now acquired an IP address in the 10.x.x.x range and we were up and running. When the IT chappy arrived he said I should disable my proxy server (which I never have enabled) but couldn't explain why I was connected. I tried to explain to him that before I called him I wasn't able to even get an IP address and he said that I didn't need one! Hmmm... interesting network they're running. Anyway, he departed and the connection stayed up for a couple of hours, then went down. Once again, I could get no IP address from the DHCP server or couldn't communicate with it. I rang reception to complain and as soon as I did I noticed that I again got an IP address. After a little bit of experimentation I found that to make contact with the DHCP server one must first dial a number on the phone, any number will do (we've been dialling 9 for an outside line, which does the trick), and a few seconds later you get your IP address. I wouldn't like to think how other less techie guests are managing. I've been debating whether I'll share this info with the IT chappy, but I suspect he already knows that this quirk exists with at least some of the room wireless APs and is saying nothing.

So, at 25$ per day for a flaky, slow wireless link I say adieu. Talk to you again when we return to the world of broadband and leave you with a couple of pix from this morning's snorkelling.

ICE Cool!

This blog comes from the deck of our beach bungalow where we are relaxing for a couple of weeks. It's two years since we were last here and there have been a number of impressive changes to the island in that time. Among them is the fact that wireless internet is now available so I can post a blog and get sunburn at the same time.

As always, we travelled out here with Emirates from Manchester via Dubai. The flight to Dubai was on one of the airlines new Boeing 777-300ERs (previously it was always a 777-200). The aircraft seating configuration (in steerage) has changed from 2-4-2 to 3-4-3, so we finished up with a window and centre seat instead of a window and aisle seat (I always try to get an aisle seat for my longish legs). This only became apparent after boarding so I wasn't looking forward to 6 1/2 hours stuck in a window seat. However, the 300ER variant has a greater seat pitch and width to the 200 version and it makes all the difference, so it was a much more comfortable experience than previously.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you about. On that leg of the flight we experienced Emirates award winning ICE in-flight entertainment system. This is surely the gold standard by which all other airline in-flight entertainment systems will be judged for some time to come. Each seat is equipped wit a 10-inch touch sensitive screen + a remote controller that allows access to over 500 different channels of entertainment. Films on ICE (Information, Communication, Entertainment) include 45 of the latest, and I do mean latest, Hollywood releases and 28 all time classic movies. For younger flyers there are 25 Disney films including most of the classics. There are also nearly 25 films from Arabia, Asia and the Far East. With over 50 TV channels to choose from, including fourteen comedy channels alone, passengers are kept entertained throughout their journey. In the Sport TV section, Emirates has recently added channels dedicated to horseracing and sailing - to mark the airline's sponsorship of these sports. The audio section offers music from around the world - over 6,000 tracks of almost every genre imaginable. Categories also include recent CD releases, essential albums and audio books. You can, if you want, listen to every UK number in a particular year, from the 50s to the current year.

Now here's the neat bit. Unlike most other in-flight systems you can start any movie you want at anytime, you can pause it if you want to stretch your legs, and you can rewind or fast forward to any point. In other words you have total control over what you watch and when you watch it.

Other features I didn't personally try were e-mail, air to ground telephone, seat to seat telephone (if your partner or friend is sitting at a distance from you it's possible to chat), and a wide range of games you can play against the computer or against fellow passengers. All this in an economy seat - fabulous!

Speaking of Viruses

Watch out for Kama Sutra this Friday February 3 and the third of every month henceforth. A new malicious worm called by various names like Nyxem, Mywife, Work–Grew A, Kama Sutra and Blackworm could begin infecting your computer system.The mass-mailing worm, which uses its own SMTP engine, sends copies of itself as e-mail attachments to addresses collected from the infected computers. The mails use social engineering techniques such as promise of pornographic pictures to entice users to open the attachment.It also propagates itself through network shares, including popular P2P file sharing services.

The virus gets under the radar of anti-virus software because of unique extensions: .b64, .bhx, .hqx, .uu, .uue, .mim. The worm has been in circulation since mid-January and many are unaware of its infection status. The virus targets popular file formats including .DOC, .XLS, .PPT, .PDF, and .ZIP. In addition to losing data, this virus also renders the keyboard and mouse inoperable, thereby leaving the user’s system dead.

Microsoft on Monday posted a security advisory on the worm, but has decided against updating its Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool before the next regularly-scheduled release of February 14.There is good news, though. Since this threat is relatively well-known to the security industry, major security vendors detect this worm and its variants. Whatever antivirus program you are using, (even if it is Norton!) make sure it's up to date and you should be protected.

Antivirus programs

First off, let me say that any antivirus program, even one that is 6 months out of date, is better than none at all. However, it just doesn't make sense to let your antivirus program go out of date by more than a couple of weeks at most. The reason for this is the large number of new viruses that continue to be released and the rapidity with which they spread. All of PC Medic's PCs are connected to the internet on a daily basis and we ensure that the antivirus programs that we have installed never go out of date. The result? We have never had a viral infection on any of our machines. Now this is not just down to the antivirus programs we run - though they play an important part - it's also due to the fact that we are pretty cautious about how we interact with the Internet in general and e-mail in particular.

So what antivirus products are we running on our own PCs. On two of the machines we run Norton Internet Security (NIS) and on another two it's EZAntivirus. We used to run Norton on all our machines but we are phasing it out as licenses expire for a number of reasons. First up is that, in our opinion, it's sloppily written code. Time and again we get ccApp (a Norton executable) errors on shut down, with no documented solution on Symantec's website. We have problems with LiveUpdate not working and problems with corrupt installations spontaneously appearing. If you have ever tried to reinstall Norton you'll find that you have to remove every trace of previous installations before you can do so - a visit to Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel will not suffice. This is a program that leaves a trail of detritus all over your registry after you uninstall it, something a program that has been around as long as this should not do. We recently had a customer complain to us that all the icons in their control panel were gone after uninstalling Norton Antivirus and, sure enough, there was an errant registry entry that hadn't been cleaned up after the uninstall that caused the problem. Sometimes the program will just refuse to uninstall and it is then necessary to download another program from Symantec to handle failed unistallations!! Sloppy.

The second reason that NIS has fallen out of favour is that it's a resource hog. We have had to uninstall the program from three customers' machines in recent months because NIS slowed their machines down to unusable levels, even though they exceeded Symantec's minimum requirements. Once NIS was removed and replaced by a lighter weight AV product it was business as usual.

Finally, the price. NIS currently sells for €70.00 (download from Symantec) and, as such, does not represent good value for money, again in our opinion. While the package includes Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Privacy Control, Norton AntiSpam, & Norton Parental Control, most people buy it because they need an antivirus program and either do not need or know how to properly configure the other components in the package.

Norton Internet Security is a good package if you have a PC with at least 512MB of RAM, if you know how to configure all the components in the package and if you can put up with the sloppiness in the code mentioned above. It is top notch at detecting and repairing viral infections and their release schedule for new virus definitions is among the best in the industry. However, consider EZAntirus as an alternative. It's an effective antivirus solution, that uses minimal system resources and you can get a year's free trial here (or buy a 2-year subscription for just $19.95). It's not perfect either, but it updates itself on schedule, uninstalls cleanly and offers the level of protection against viruses that most home users need.

In summary, most home users do not need industrial strength antivirus/internet security suite products such as those offered by Norton and McAfee, though these are not intrinsically bad products. There are a number of good low-cost or, in some cases, free alternatives that will meet the home users needs just as well, such as EZAntivirus, AVG, F-Prot and Panda. The bottom line is to get an antivirus product that meets - not exceeds - your needs, keep it updated and, most importantly, make sure your behaviour in relation to how you interact with the Internet puts you in a low risk category of picking up a virus or other badware element.