Archive for the ‘News’ Category

A vulnerability in the WiFi Protected Setup in some wireless routers threatens to make it easier for attackers to gain access to the router via brute force, a tech site reported.

The Hacker News said security researcher Stefan Viehbock discovered the vulnerability and reported it to the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT).

“I noticed a few really bad design decisions which enable an efficient brute force attack, thus effectively breaking the security of pretty much all WPS-enabled Wi-Fi routers. As all of the of the more recent router models come with WPS enabled by default, this affects millions of devices worldwide” The Hacker News quoted Viehbock as saying. (http://thehackernews.com/2011/12/easy-router-pin-guessing-with-new-wifi.html).

For now, US-CERT said the only workaround is to disable WPS.

“Although the following will not mitigate this specific vulnerability, best practices also recommend only using WPA2 encryption with a strong password, disabling UPnP, and enabling MAC address filtering so only trusted computers and devices can connect to the wireless network,” it said.

The CERT also indicated affected vendors include:

Belkin, Inc.
Buffalo Inc.
D-Link Systems, Inc.
Linksys
Netgear, Inc.
Technicolor
TP-Link
ZyXEL

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Looking for a way to extend your home’s Wi-Fi signal to your RV parked in the back yard? Here’s a report from a homeowner writing for theAtlantic.com on the Belkin Wi-Fi Range Extender that may help you out.

In our house, the broadband cable comes in on the top floor of one corner of the house, which conveniently is where my office also is. (Why cable connection on the top floor? It is fed straight over from a telephone pole.) But a Wi-Fi router placed up there sends a signal that doesn’t reach the lower floors and the other side of the house, which is where we are a lot of the time. And placing the Wi-Fi router anyplace else would mean snaking Cat 5 cable down the stairway and through other rooms, which my wife has informed me we are not going to do.

Over the years I’ve tinkered with various solutions but the solution I’ve recently tried is by far the simplest: the Wi-Fi Range Extender from Belkin, for $65 – $75.

The extender works by taking your existing Wi-Fi signal and re-propagating it to cover more of the house. Our existing dual-band router now sends out two signals, which I’ll call Network1 and Network2. Nerds will know that one is 2.4GHz and one is 5GHz. The extender creates two new Wi-Fi signals, let’s say Network1_xt and Network2_xt, which are broadcast from its new location. You just need to place it close enough to the original router to receive its signal — and close enough to the now-uncovered areas to extend coverage to them.

Less than five minutes after I opened the box, no joke, the new gizmo was running*, and the two new networks extended coverage to all parts of our house.

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