[Tirus]

So, a lot of you should know that Wireless security is an essential thing in networking. You don't want some random stranger connecting to your
Networking and doing malicious stuff(MITM attacks). They also can be taking up bandwidth on your wireless network that you are paying for(hopefully).
Wireless networks are called "shared mediums" which means the more bandwith one person is using, the other person has little. Which means they can watch
your network. The most important type of security on your network is encryption. They have multiple other types of security methods, which I'll be going over with you now.

First, hide your SSID. What's a SSID you ask? An SSID is a service set identifier. You normally get your SSID when you initally set up setup your SSID.
When you leave your SSID the same as the SSID left by the hardware manufactor when you first set up your router. So, you can decide to make your SSID
hidden, or non hidden. This security isn't really essential if you are having problems with people who are trying to get into your networking.
That sounds interesting? Great, follow these steps and you should be able to change your SSID(May vary upon your specific router)

First, we need to find our default gateway. We can do this by opening up CMD and typing "ipconfig" or if you're on Linux, open up terminal and type "ifconfig"
Sadly I am not running Linux at this moment so I cannot show you how it works, Google is your friend for this.



Now that we have our CMD open, we'll execute ipconfig. You should see a few things on the "ipconfig", ignore them aside from the "Default Gateway"
which should be along the lines of 192.168.x.x.



Now, we open up our favorite browser and go to our default gateway which was prompted to us via CMD and once we're in our default gateway, you should see something along the lines of
"Wifi" something. Mine was "Wireless settings". Here is what the wireless settings page looks like for me:



Now that we can change our SSID, feel free to do whatever you want. But remember, you can't prevent an attacker from getting into your system just by changing your SSID.
It'll make people who aren't really intelligent not want to go through the hassle of decrypting your network, spoofing their mac address, and all sorts of things.

The next type of security is called, mac address filtering. A mac address is how your computer is identified on your network. This identifier is assigned to a network adapter or network interface card

Mac Address Filtering, this is a pretty cool "protection". This security "method" pretty much allows specific people on your network and not on your network.
You can make it so people can only connect if they have a set mac address at which you have already set on your network, sadly, this is easily bypassable with
mac address spoofing. Now, you want to find our your mac address. How would you do that? Easy, open up CMD like you did previously in this tutorial and execute the
same exact command you executed before. "ipconfig /all"( All basically tells it to give you all of your information.)



Whenever you're making it as a computer can only connect to your network with a set mac address, make sure you do it properly. What your router will do whenever
someone tries to connect to your network is check the mac address of the connector to the tables of mac addresses you already have specified to be allowed to connect
on your network.

Basic encryption, I won't even go into this but rather, I'll give you some good encryptions to use whenever setting up your wireless network.

WEP - Passphrase generates a hexadecimal key.
WPA - Either a 8-63 character passphrase OR a 64 character hex key(TKIP).
WPA2 - Either a 8-63 character passphrase OR a 64 character hex key(AES).

[mothered]

It's great to read that you've Included MAC address filtering. A lot of users tend to overlook this.

If I may add, It's also good practice to change the Modem/Router's default login credentials. The commonality of "admin:admin", "admin2:admin2" etc that's defaulted to a variety of devices, Is known to many.
Prior to any security Implementations, I recommend the Router's login details should be changed.

Aside from that, good work.

[Tirus]

It's great to read that you've Included MAC address filtering. A lot of users tend to overlook this.

If I may add, It's also good practice to change the Modem/Router's default login credentials. The commonality of "admin:admin", "admin2:admin2" etc that's defaulted to a variety of devices, Is known to many.
Prior to any security Implementations, I recommend the Router's login details should be changed.

Aside from that, good work.

Changing the default gateways is past the "front face" security part of this thread. This is to prevent attackers from obtaining access to your network(Which would let them access your default gateway). Once access is obtained on the network, you can access the default gateway. So, I suppose some more ways to implement second hand security once they even get access into your network.

[Brawler]

I would be careful with your misleading thread title... There are a few security related tidbits sprinkled throughout your post, however, most of it is discussing basic networking/configuration.

Some issues I see:

• SSID's are public by design, and trivial to find/disclose (even if they are not broadcasting).
  
• WEP should never be used. Period.
  
• As you mentioned, MAC address filtering isn't an end all solution. However, you fail to mention that there are better alternatives (such as a well configured/implemented NAC). No solution in this regard is perfect at the moment as any information given to these devices can be spoofed, but increasing the complexity drastically increases the difficulty.
  

If your goal is to keep out nosy neighbors, a strong password should suffice.... If your goal is to achieve a secure network... Then the information in this thread isn't enough to start anyone down that path. :\