Finally, you’ve completed setting up your personal wireless network. You’ve assigned it a great network name and a solid password to keep intruders away.
So, you are completely protected, right? Wrong!
Although you have made some basic changes which help you secure your network, you are still not 100% protected. Hashers have their own ways to access your wireless network. This also means you have to be careful when you are connecting to any open network.
The following few paragraphs are about the methods hackers use to access the wireless networks. So, please read on. When you know what you can expect, you will know how to protect yourself from it. And you will be surprised to know how easy it is to stay protected and take good care of all your private data.
Sniffing
This is a basic hacking method. This practically means that all the data transferred in an unprotected network can be intercepted. If you are working in a secured network, you don’t have to worry much about this. However, every once in a while we connect to an open network, for example in a restaurant or café.
So, a person in the café or outside of it, but connected to the network picks all the data transferred wirelessly. In this way, he or she can collect sensitive data like passwords and emails. So, if you want to be protected from this hacking method make sure not to connect to unsecured networks.
Spoofing
You already know that when you connect a device for the first time to a network, the next time you connect to it it doesn’t ask you to enter a password. Practically, the moment you get in the wireless signal range the device connects on its own.
Of course, we all love this option but there is plenty of opportunity for malicious activities here. The hacker can create a wireless network with the same network name and much stronger signal. So your device generally connects to the network with a stronger signal and you are in danger without even knowing it.
If you have the option on your device to avoid automatic connecting, you should use it. This is the best way to fight this hacking method.
See Also: Ways to Protect Your Computer from Hackers While Traveling
Cracking the Encryption
If everything was perfect in this world, it would be enough to set up a password on your network and be protected completely. However, this is just a dream. Unfortunately, there are tools which are used to break the network password and allow the hacker to gain access to your network.
The ways in which the wireless password can be cracked increases every single day, but even the simplest ones will do the job. There are tools which use brute force attack and efficiently crack passwords.
The simpler the password, the easier to crack it. Sometimes, a hacker can be simply lucky and the software cracks the password quickly. Otherwise, the whole process may take some time.
So, in order to protect yourself from this attack, you have to login to the router using the default IP (in most cases 192.168.1.1) and choose WPA2 encryption. If you combine this option with a strong password made of special characters, small and big letters, and numbers, you will be safe.
See Also: How to Find Your Computer IP Address
Final Words
Sniffing, spoofing, and cracking the encryption are three of the most common methods of hacking a wifi connection. However, there are also other more advanced methods and exploits which make it difficult to say that we are completely secured.
If you’re just a regular person going about his or her normal business, you don’t need to worry about such advanced methods. When we talk about hacking, we have to say that the success of such attacks mainly depends on the network owner’s negligence than on the actual expertise of the hacker itself.
If you use a strong network wireless password and avoid accessing sensitive websites from unprotected networks, you can be sure that you are well protected.