rperkin;266862 Wrote: > Indeed. But it should also be remembered that MAC address filtering > provides *no* useful security whatsoever. It is worthless. Don't bother > with it. > >
Sorry, I don't agree with you or Jim on this one. The flaw in your thinking, I believe, is that you are not looking at the problem (how do I stop unwanted people tapping into my wireless network?) from a risk management point of view. In a given situation, what are the chief risks and how do you protect against them? The answer to the first question will depend a lot on where you live. If you're in a block of flats/apartments then the chances are quite high that there is someone within range who has the skills to break anything less than WPA2. The risk you need to protect yourself against is that they have a determined go at getting into your network. MAC filtering, agreed, isn't much use - rather like having locks on internal doors, all it does is slow someone up fractionally and probably annoy them in the process. However in my case - and I suspect this is true for other people too - I know all of the people who are in range of my network. I am confident that none of them have the skills to make even the simplest of hacks. My main risk is that one of them, in ignorance, attaches to my network instead of theirs and, in the process of blundering around, does some damage. For this risk MAC filtering is a perfectly adequate protection. Having protected against that risk with MAC filtering, of course I might then move on to the next risk on my list: someone is so determined to get at my data that they drive up with a laptop in the middle of the night, park within range, and attack. To protect against this risk of course I need encryption, but I probably also need my head examining for advanced paranoia. So is MAC filtering "worthless"? No, definitely not. Is it enough? Well, it depends, but probably not. One more thought: depending on just one line of defence, however good (eg strong encryption), is almost always a bad idea. Read some of the threads here about people who have had wireless problems and, in the process of troubleshooting, have had to temporarily turn encryption off. Having that - however simple - further layer of protection is very valuable in such a case. IMHO, of course. Ceejay -- ceejay ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ceejay's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=148 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=43210 _______________________________________________ jive mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jive
