Securing Wi-Fi: What NOT to do

Quick: what do MAC filtering, disabling DHCP, and disabling SSID broadcasting all have in common? They’re all terrible ways of “securing” your Wi-Fi network. This article over at ZD Net explains:

These aren’t layered approaches; they’re more like buying overlapping warranty coverage, since any benefit against casual bandwidth thieves is already covered by real security measures. The harm is that people confuse these methods for the real thing, and they spend more money and resources on implementing the wrong security mechanisms and end up skimping on real security.

Amen! Preach it, brotha! As I’ve been trying to tell armchair security experts for years, things like MAC filtering and disabling DHCP only make hacking slightly more difficult for hackers and significantly more difficult for both guests and regular users.

Just use a long random password under WPA2-AES and you’ll be fine. I promise.

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