Hi guys,

The place I am moving to, now has a wireless access point in there, and I am guessing that they may not be up on their security at all.

I want to implement some element of security that is not too hard for them to grasp. This I have no problems in doing, there are more than enough tutorials and the like on here to learn all that, and I am getting pretty savy here.

What my question is, is how would you go about persuading someone to secure their network? I have had resistance to security before, in fact I get a lot of it, the average joe thinks it is too much hassel to do untill they have been affected by it. I am at this moment learning how to use ethereal and when I go to pick up the keys next week, I was thinking of taking my laptop along, and just showing them what could be gleaned, just by hooking up to their network and doing some analysis.

Here lies the problem, this seems like a logical way forward, and certainly for a professional company could be invaluable. But for a social and particularly house share environment, could this possibly cause distrust in the house, knowing that someone has the ability to be watching their every move on the network.

What would you guys do in this situation? Basically, I want a fairly secure link, I don't want our bandwidth nicked, and I want to know that I can still bank online, which I would not feel safe about if it was just an open network.

I would secure the network by naming it, and not broadcasting it. I think this is akin to chaining a bicycle to a lamppost in that it is secure from the average joe bloggs who might walk past. Yet it leaves it simple enough for friends to log in with their laptops if they want, without me having to be there.

Your thoughts on this would be interesting. It seems more of a social engineering question actuall, of which I am becoming interested.


Jonny the Social Butterfrond