Re: Wireless security

Moe Trin wrote:

Obviously it depends on where you live, and how valuable the data on
your computer is. In my case, for instance, I know and trust everyone
within WiFi range of my house,

You should really be checking out to ~3-5 times as far, given that the
bad guy may be using a 10 to 15 dBi antenna, which has the effect of
increasing the maximum range by that multiple in a given direction.

so we are talking of someone in a car lurking somewhere in the
vicinity, choosing my computer system to break into,

Very little choosing about it - more random chance than anything.

But why would anyone go to the trouble?
I don't know where you live, but it is quite a serious offence here
(and everywhere in the EU, I think) to break into a computer system.

and having the necessary computer savvy to break a WEP key.

You mean some ten-year-old who can use any search engine?

Again, I very much doubt if there are any 10 year olds in Dublin
with the knowledge and desire to do this.

I would say that there are far less than 1000 people in Dublin
with the ability to do this (most of them college students),
and of those less than a dozen would go round trying to break into
random computer systems.
And of those, 90% would choose a system with a large number of users -
a college system, in fact.

Say there are 2 million computers in Dublin.
The probability of someone trying to break into mine
I would estimate at less that 0.001% per year.
It's not worth worrying about risks that low.

I regard most of the worry about WiFi security
as part of the general paranoia about security
which seems to have overtaken the world since 9/11.

Rational security policy must take some account
of the statistical probability of hostile action.




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