Conclusion: Limiting Your Vulnerabilities

Conclusion: Limiting Your
Vulnerabilities

Remember that no matter what device is connected to your network,
right out of the box there are few or no security features enabled by
default. This is a fact for just about everything on your network. The
goal of this chapter has been to point out some of the major possibilities
that would cause problems for your wired network from hackers unauthorized to use the wireless network.

First, make sure you understand all the security settings available in
any network device in your network. Note that items such as file servers
or network printers are attached to your LAN and can be very easily
accessed or abused by someone on your WLAN. Understand how to protect
these settings; restrict access to those who are directly responsible
for the administration of these devices. It is important to note that items
on your network that don’t seem obvious targets for hackers are vulnerable
and can easily facilitate a simple security breach you would not
normally have considered.

Two methods of visualization are important when trying to consider
how security plays an effective role within your wireless network: internal
device security and external network security.
Internal device security is applicable to NAS boxes and networked
printers. Make certain to set the LAN segment these devices can function
on and restrict access with a login and password for each resource. Do not
allow functionality to be accessible by “any user,” which is the common
default on almost every network printer. Note that hackers can deplete
your paper and ink and reduce the overall life of these devices by misusing
them at all hours of the day and night. Hackers can cause extreme
network congestion by sending large graphic files over your network to
wait in endless queues to be printed by almost any network printer.
NAS boxes represent easy file access across your network. These common
devices are hooked up to your wired LAN, but are extremely easy to
access as a public file resource for any wireless user. That means any
file, program, or other document on these file servers can be destroyed,
corrupted, or stolen by anyone. Note that a wireless user has all the
same access rights as a standard internal LAN user. This means your
intranet is unsafe and unprotected!

Finally, consider all the external types of access breaches that a misconfigured access point can represent. If you don’t plug holes that allow
a hacker to use a promiscuous wireless NIC card to attack and breach your systems from the parking lot of your corporate facilities, then you
are leaving yourself wide open to attack.
Try to think from the hacker’s perspective:


What types of resources are available to just “anyone” who is a wireless
user in your network?


How wide and far reaching is your wireless network?


How many different users exist on your network?


Have you registered every wireless NIC card so that you don’t allow
just “anyone” to access it?

If you consider these questions and more, you can more easily determine
how to defend your entire network from a wireless security breach.
Once you eliminate as much vulnerability as you can, then you have a
far greater level of protection that enables you to survive a hacker
attack than someone who didn’t read this book and may be unprepared!