WizGidget

Recently I worked with a local client who had a relatively new wireless router that had a “guest” network feature. It’s a bit like having two wireless routers in one, because it could offer two independent SSID’s (Service Set ID, the “name” of a particular wireless network). Why would you want to do this? Imagine having two rooms, an “inside” room with all your valuables in it, and an “outside” room that only has the bare minimums. You would probably only let trusted individuals like family and maybe close friends into the room with the valuables. Someone you don’t know well would be ushered into the “guest” room with only the bare essentials. That’s how the guest network works: it allows internet access, but keeps the guest separate from your important stuff.

It would be possible with this particular router to set the “inside” wireless network to use the normal WPA (Wireless Protected Access) security measures, while setting the “guest” network to be unsecured. This would certainly make it easy for guests in your home or business to access the internet — they could just connect without bothering to put in the WPA password.

Even though they’re kept separate from your “inside” network, it’s still not a good idea to run the “guest” network without security being set. The challenge, as I’ve written about in the past, is that you can have neighbors or drive-by hackers using your network to do nasty things on the internet using your resources, and looking to the authorities as if you’re the one doing it. There was an article recently (http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2011/04/false_kid_porno_raid_gets_media_play.html – click the link in the first paragraph which is a link to the original AP article) describing an arrest made by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) where the person they arrested was guilty only of leaving their wireless network unsecured. It isn’t a crime to leave your wireless unsecured, but it sure leaves you open to abuse by ICE, FBI, or other don’t-let-civil-rights-get-in-the-way-of-crime-fighting organizations. The person in question had gotten frustrated with setting the security on his new wireless router, and almost instantly became victim to his 20-something neighbor’s taste for child pornography.

My point of view isn’t so much that I want to avoid false arrest; I just don’t want to enable spammers, pornographers and other morally disabled people by giving them free access to the internet.

There was a time when wireless routers were unsecured out-of-the-box. It seems that the manufacturers have wised up to this being a problem, and many are now shipping wireless routers with security enabled, and in many cases with tools to make it easy to add new computers and other wireless devices.

Interestingly, when I was working with the aforementioned client with the “guest” network router, I had the toughest time understanding why his laptop couldn’t “see” his other computer on the network. I finally realized that he’d set his laptop to connect to the “guest” network instead of the “inside” network, effectively blocking network traffic between the two.

Phishing (pronounced “fishing”) is one of the more insidious cybercrimes going on today.  Phishing is the process of fraudulently acquiring sensitive information such as account passwords, credit card information and the like by masquerading as your bank or other trusted organization, usually by email but also by instant message, phone or other means. Phishing attempts are usually “socially engineered” to get you to do what they’re wanting.  They try to create fear in the victim, which leads them to take hasty action without closely examining the email.  Phishing goes hand-in-hand with spam, because most of the phishing attempts are done through email, and they have to get your address from somewhere.  The phishing attempts are often very well crafted, using graphics they’ve “borrowed” from legitimate websites or emails.  People who fall victim to phishing attempts are then subject to identity theft, having their bank accounts drained or fraudulent credit card charges, or even having their accounts like AOL or Facebook used to perpetrate other crimes.

Fortunately it’s fairly easy to spot phishing attempts, especially in emails.  The first clue is that often something looks fishy (pardon the pun) about the email.  Words may be misspelled or the grammar may be poor — the people who are crafting the messages are often natives of foreign countries like Poland, Romania, Russia or China.  Sometimes the name in the To: field may not be your name, or the To: field may be blank.  Another clue is that there’s something wrong with the link in the message — it doesn’t match the text or the domain name isn’t quite right.  Outlook users can check this by hovering the mouse pointer over the link in the message.  Outlook will pop up a window that shows the actual location for the link.  If the actual location doesn’t match, it’s a good bet that email is a phishing attempt.  For example, the email might show www.wizgidget.com/articles, but the actual link that the popup window will show is www.wizgidget.com.abxrt.com.pl/articles — see the difference in the domain? The “.pl” in the domain name means it’s from Poland although there’s nothing keeping them from using .com domains.  Sometimes the link will show text like “click here”, but the actual link in the popup will be an “IP” address like “http://173.201.16.100″.  Don’t be fooled by domain names that have the legitimate name imbedded, like www.paypal.com.gotcha.pl!

You may remember the discussion of using “throwaway” email addresses in both the “Can the Spam” and “Free Email” series.  This is another technique that is helpful in detecting phishing email.  If I get an email that looks like it’s coming from Paypal, but it’s to an address that I used for an online electronics vendor, I know it’s not legit.

You can find more information online about phishing.  Paypal has a lot of good information, go to www.paypal.com and look for the “Security Center” link at the top of the page.  Also see the Wikipedia.org page on phishing.  As always, this article is available online at wizgidget.com