Any way to trace

[Wingnutt]

someone who keeps getting on my wireless network?

It appears that somebody in my neighborhood has become quite adept at cracking my wireless network name and password; that or they have a password cracker.

I have been seeing activity on my wireless router when nobody here is on the network for about six months now. I have turned off both computers and I still see activity on the wireless channels. I have since hardwired all of our computers into the router, but I cannot turn off the wireless channels on the router.

I have changed both the wireless network name and password about a dozen times since I noticed the activity on the wireless channels and I'm good to go for about a week, then they are back on my network. I have called the cable company, but all they say that I need better security. Huh? My passwords are are 12 place alpha-numeric passwords with no repeating numbers or letters and random capital letters!

Fortunately they haven't managed to get past my firewalls, but some nights my anti-intrusion software goes nuts blocking repeated attempts to get to my hard drive. I thought I might be able to pick up a hint from the blocked intrusion logs, but the only IP that shows up is mine! Makes sense if they are already on my network.

I really don't want to have to buy a new router because some knucklehead wants top steal my signal instead of paying for it. But I wouldn't mind a little up close and personal discussion about stealing my signal!

I have talked to my neighbors that I think are within the signal range, but none of them have a network set up so they can monitor it for any suspicious usage. As a matter of fact only two of my closest neighbors have a computer at all. I'm not sure of the newer routers' signal strength, but when activate my wireless card, and look at the available networks, my wireless card shows three, including mine. I wish I could figure out who has those other networks so I could talk to them and see if they are having this problem too.

So if anybody has any ideas, could you please post them up?

 

[Fl_Richard]

Re: Any way to trace

Download a network packet sniffer. This will identify the users wireless Mac number, Block this number in you routers allowed access list and wait for him to change network cards or routers.

Or - get a laptop and walk around watching the strength meter. Eventually you'll find the source. The rest is up to you.

 

[rogerwa]

Re: Any way to trace

What kind of router.. What type of encryption are you using (WEP/WPA??)

Have you tried shutting off the broadcast, changing the SSID and channel, and going to MAC address filtering (only let predefined adapters attach??)?

 

[mables]

Re: Any way to trace

your router should have a dhcp client list find it. What it will display is all of the connected devices mac addresses and from that you can find out what kind of pc they have, well the ethernet card anyway, you can go to coffer.com to look it up and it will tell you the vendor. Once you have that info you should be able to block that mac address from accessing, another thing you can do is add the mac addresses of you pc's to the list and only allow them on then they wouldn't be able to connect unless they were able to spoof yours while yours wasn't connected to the network which would be very difficult.

 

[Wingnutt]

Re: Any way to trace

Ahhhh forgot about the mac address filter! Thanks!

Still, I would like to find out who it is...you know, just for entrainment purposes.

 

[Bob_VT]

Re: Any way to trace

If they are running LINUX you are probably not going to stop them....... there are programs that crack WEP and WPA real fast!

 

[ezmobee]

Re: Any way to trace

Change your SSID to the below

 

[dolluper]

Re: Any way to trace

You Need ATLEAST 14 symbols letters numbers upper and lower case.....hummm I said this before or else there are programs free that crack IT so over 14 takes hours believe me

 

[j_martin]

Re: Any way to trace

I find it pretty hard to believe you can't just disable the wireless port on the router.

 

[dolluper]

Re: Any way to trace

plus your router logs IP 's that connect at certain times ......hummmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[superbenk]

Re: Any way to trace

MAC address spoofing is really easy & your MAC addresses are broadcast in plain text over your wireless signal. It's not hard to figure out what MAC addresses are on your network and use them.

Anything less than WPA2 (not just WPA) is fairly insecure. WEP is completely useless and can be cracked easily. WPA is much harder, but not impossible for a determined intruder.

I also find it pretty hard to believe you can't turn your wireless off on the router. I've never seen a router you can't do that on.

You sure you don't have a cell phone or something you're forgetting about using your wireless? A firewall between any wireless access point and your network is a must. A VPN for connecting to your network from wireless is even better, but usually well outside the technical scope of most home users.

 

[fishrdan]

Re: Any way to trace

Here's a low-tech solution... Remove the antenna off your router, you're not using wireless anyway, right? It will still put out a wireless signal, but the range will be greatly reduced.

Besides what was mentioned earlier, you could also turn off the DHCP server in the router, set the router's LAN to something like 10.217.158.1 and statically assign an IP (GW, subnet, DNS's) to each of your computers,,, 10.217.158.50, 51, 52. Without a DHCP server they won't be able to pull and IP from your network and gain access, they would need to decipher what IP scheme you are using to gain access. There are probably tools to hack that too...

 

[superbenk]

Re: Any way to trace

Besides what was mentioned earlier, you could also turn off the DHCP server in the router, set the router's LAN to something like 10.217.158.1 and statically assign an IP (GW, subnet, DNS's) to each of your computers,,, 10.217.158.50, 51, 52. Without a DHCP server they won't be able to pull and IP from your network and gain access, they would need to decipher what IP scheme you are using to gain access. There are probably tools to hack that too...

This isn't actually any harder to get than the MAC address. Both are sent un-encrypted no matter which encryption method you use because they happen at a layer lower than where the encryption takes place. If they were encrypted, the hardware wouldn't know how to route the traffic, etc. it'd just be noise. Spoofing IP addresses is just as easy as spoofing MAC addresses (if not easier).

Really the best solution is to

1. Turn off the wireless (I'm 99.999% sure you can unless it's a really wacky router), but if not...
2. Make sure you're using WPA2 with a strong passphrase
3. Turn off SSID broadcasting
4. Make sure you have a solid firewall enabled on the router
5. Make sure you have a solid firewall on all your computers (every major OS comes with built-in firewall solutions)
6. Make sure you use strong passwords for everything important (logins, share points, etc.)
7. Don't use the same passwords for everything (or anything). Get a good password manager and use it for storing secure passwords for both network stuff & web logins, etc. KeePass is a very good free one. I use 1Password on my Mac, but it's also available for Windows & is very worth the money.

If you just want wireless to only access the Internet, some routers offer a "Guest Wireless" option which sets up a separate network specifically for wireless that can't access your wired network and can only access the Internet. The idea behind it is that you can give out the guest network connection info to visitors without letting them have access to your private network stuff. If you turn off wireless for your private network & only have the guest wireless network setup (& secured still as above), then even if intruders do get on it, all they can do is access the Internet, not your stuff. I got this Netgear WNDR3700-100NAS which does just that and love it.

 

[heyttown]

Re: Any way to trace

Im very greek at this wireless stuff, but just purchased a laptop and wireless router I will set up later today... I read you talked to your neighbors and what computers they use..But did you ask if their kids have an xbox or Wii or other game systems...Those all can search and connect to a wireless connection similar to a laptop...
Not sure of the logistics of things, but just a thought.