You’ve set up a wireless network in your home or small office and configured it with the highest level of encryption using a WPA2 passphrase. But is that WPA2 passphrase strong enough to protect the wireless network? A weak WPA2 passphrase could be hacked allowing an unauthorized person to use the wireless network. Even worse this unauthorized person could decrypt the communications revealing emails you send, web sites you visit, and passwords you use for access to websites.
You’re probably saying to yourself if WPA2 encryption could be broken on my wireless network is there anything I can do to improve security for the network? Yes, with a couple of safe guards WPA2 can provide the required security, and I will describe how to apply these safe guards by always changing the factory default network SSID, and how the WPA2 passphrase should be a completely random string of characters.
All small office home office routers ship from the factory with a default SSID assigned to the wireless network name. It might be Dlink, Linksys, or something else the vendor selected. You should always change this SSID to something of your choosing, but avoid a network SSID that might identify who owns the network, or something found in the top 1000 SSID names. Along with the WPA2 passphrase, the SSID is used to create the key to encrypt the wireless communications. Even though the SSID name can easily be found, if you’re using the factory default SSID or a common SSID name you make the job of the hacker that much easier.
With the SSID changed let’s move on to WPA2 passphrase. The WPA2 passphrase should be a completely random string of letters and numbers. Don’t use common dictionary words, names, a famous quote, the name of your favorite sports team, etc… At a minimum the WPA2 passphrase should be 25 characters, and you can bang on the keyboard until you get something with 25 characters or use a password generator web site. I like to use the password generator on the WhatsMyip.org website. If you use this site scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the WPA Password Generator section, and use the “Better” option to generate a random 32 character passphrase.
WPA Password Generator
After getting WPA2 passphrase entered into the wireless management interface on the router you should copy it into a Notepad file and save that to a USB storage drive. You can plug the USB drive into the other wireless devices and open the file to copy and paste the WPA2 passphrase into those devices to quickly add them to the network. Some devices may not have USB ports, and may require you to manually type in the passphrase, but this will be a onetime entry since the devices will save the passphrase.
The two suggestions above will increase the security of your wireless network and make it harder for a potential hacker to break. Making your wireless network a difficult target will more than likely cause a hacker to move on to an easier one.
Additional Reading:
To learn more about passphrases check out the Wikipedia page.
If you’re looking for more security tips when setting up a home wireless network check out my earlier blog post.
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