[bronte25]

Hi,

My emac and ibook each connect to the internet via an airport base station which, in turn, connects to a us robotics router (and then to the cable modem).

I have activated printer sharing on the emac (which is connected to a printer) and personal file sharing on both computers. I gave each computer a different 'rendezvous' name. I also had the option of entering the afp (?) number of each computer, which I did, to make the connection start up faster. In order to connect for file sharing, I was asked to enter user name and password, so I entered my adminstrator account name/password. Everything works perfectly. (I don't know how it worked, but it did!).

I transferred a ton of files and mp3s from one to the other and it really worked well.

Question: Are my files open to anyone with a wireless card? is this an OK setup or is there something more I should do to protect my files/privacy, etc? Should I add a password to airport (I've read about that in these forums). Is the router protecting me with file sharing on? At one point, I had 'wep enabled" on my airport setup and I totally lost my connection.

Thanks for any feedback/help with my setup.

[ghporter]

Your router is keeping anyone from the outside from getting to your wireless network through your Internet connection. It can't protect your wireless network from someone with a wireless hacking capability, though.

Yes, you should enable WEP (the network password and encryption scheme for all 802.11b wireless networks) and use 128-bit encryption. Choose a strong password, not something that's a word or simple combination of words. Include punctuation, numbers, upper and lower case characters if you're using the basic text password input. Hexidecimal keys are inherently more secure than text, because there's absolutely no way to guess them, and their only down side is that it's somewhat unwieldy to generate and enter them. Once you have entered them, though, they are very hard to crack, requiring what's called a "brute force" attack, where every possible combination is tried against your traffic. You should also change your key often, say monthly, to ensure that some jerk next door isn't capturing your traffic and then taking his time to break it,so he can collect credit card numbers, etc.

You will see a lot of stuff online saying that WEP is fatally flawed and not worth your effort. Wrong. It is not as robust as it should be, and someone with the proper tools and access to your wireless traffic can recover your key in not too much time. However, the "return on investment" for this sort of attack is very small, and not a major threat to an individual's home network. New, truly secure fixes are in the works, which will make your wireless network very secure, but that doesn't mean you should leave your door unlocked, just because you know your current lock isn't the best possible lock.