Broadcasting SSCID

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,714
Not all network cards work correctly with the SSID disabled the drivers on my work laptop will not pickup my wireless connection unless SSID is disabled. Generally if you can turn it off I would as it will stop opportunistic types who arent technically competant from finding your connection easily. As beansprout says though anyone slightly competant will have tools that are freely available on the internet that will find "hidden networks" ie networks with SSID disabled.

The single most useful thing you can do is ensure that you are using WPA/WPA2 with a long key. WEP is stupidly easy to crack these days software that is easily available on the net will crack a wep key with little or no knowledge from the software user other than the ability to search for said software on google. MAC address filtering is also not very effective as its easy enough to sniff out and then spoof someone's mac address.
 
Soldato
Joined
9 May 2005
Posts
4,524
Location
Nottingham
Yeah SSID hiding is a bad idea, not only does it cause problems when trying to add clients but Windows clients also spit out the SSID name when the AP is not in even range such as when connecting to a public hotspot. As FordPrefect mentioned, adding a WPA security is the best thing to do, the next is to change the default SSID and all default passwords. This will help conceal your devices identity, having an SSID such as 'belkin54g" is esentially advertising you have no idea about security and are likely to be using the default settings.
 
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