Can I just leave the Wi-Fi password as the default one?

As I promised, this time I wanted to talk to you about your wifi password. Every now and then I hear from family members or friends who ask me ‘can I just leave my wifi password as it came by default?’ and their argument is that they haven’t changed their wifi password because the one their provider gave them is complicated enough that no living soul could guess it. They’re partly right, we’ve already covered what makes a password secure, but with wifi passwords things get a bit more complicated. Let me first tell you a few things about wifi networks:

It’s been quite a few years now since wifi networks joined us. At first they seemed like a really good idea, an easy, fast and cheap way to extend the perimeter of my network without being ‘tied down’ by an ethernet cable, which allowed for a bit of mobility within its range. Sounds good when you put it that way, right? But it also had its downsides… up until that point, with conventional wired networks, for some bad guy to sneak into your network, they had to get into your house or office with some excuse and physically plug their laptop into your network. Once inside, they could spread a virus, access shared folders or printers, browse the internet… pretty much anything… but of course, they had to be inside, which wasn’t easy. However, with the arrival of wifi networks, things changed… sure, coverage isn’t great on a typical home network, but it’s strong enough that the guy who wants to sneak into our network can try his luck right from our front door, or by hanging around near one of our windows… he’ll probably get enough signal.

Since wired networks didn’t have much access control (because you had to be physically inside), the first wifi networks didn’t have much either… until someone discovered they had all their neighbors connected and figured it wasn’t fair that only they were paying for the connection, so they decided to implement a layer of security and encryption, not just to keep people from connecting but also to stop neighbors from being able to capture their traffic… and the first attempts were laughable, it took several years before WPA2 came along to encrypt and protect access to our wireless networks.

I’m not going to get into explaining what WPA2 is and why it’s more secure than WPA and WEP, but it’s the only system you should have on your network if you want it to be secure. If your router from a few years back doesn’t support WPA2 and only has WEP and WPA, you should replace it with a more modern one. Not even WPA2 is 100% secure, but if we combine WPA2 with a good password… we’ll have a fairly robust system, robust enough that if someone wants to attack it, they’ll figure it’s too much hassle and go look for a more ‘cooperative’ neighbor instead.

What makes a good WPA2 password?

A good password means we need to look for a password similar to the one we’d use for any of our online services, created the same way we discussed a few days ago in the link I mentioned above.

Alright, fine… but why does all this matter? My router already came with a hard password when the guy from Ono installed it

Most manufacturers and providers put a sticker on your router with an insanely hard password that ticks all the boxes we talked about the other day, but in this case it’s not good enough because that password is generated by some little program from the provider. Let me explain: I don’t know if you’ve noticed that there are lots of networks with custom names (right now, mine is called TALETS) but there are others with more generic names like MOVISTAR_67CD or ORANGE_89323H. The provider generates passwords based on those weird identification names… there’s no guy sitting there thinking ‘let’s see, brand new router we just made… I’ll set a password with a letter, a special character, an uppercase letter…’, can you imagine? For this they use a little program based on the network name, so everyone with a network called MOVISTAR_67CD only has a handful of automatically generated passwords to choose from. Thank goodness it’s not just one for everyone with the same network name, but there aren’t that many more either. Fewer than 10. Which means all those people with the MOVISTAR_67CD network share one of those 10 passwords… if someone gets hold of all 10, they can just try them one by one until they get in. And you might be thinking ‘but… how would anyone get those 10 passwords that only the provider knows?’ well, because there are bad guys with plenty of free time and enough technical know-how to figure this out and write a program to hunt down these passwords… so if you search the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, you’ll find loads of little apps for connecting to wifi networks, some of which recognize the generic name and look up in their database which passwords the manufacturer generated for that generic name, and start trying them out… all automatically and within seconds. Cool, right?

So, what should we do to keep our wifi secure?

Well, to sum it up briefly and without getting too deep into it, here are the steps you should follow:

– Change the network name to something less generic. Though don’t go naming it ‘Attack me if you can’ either, something discreet if possible.
– Make sure your wifi is using the WPA2 system.
– Change the password for that network and generate a good one like we saw a few days ago.
– Change the router’s admin password, the same one you used to be able to change the network password.
– Only share the password with people you trust… otherwise that neighbor you get along so well with, the one you let use your wifi, might pass it along to other neighbors you don’t get along with quite as well.
– Change the password every so often… it doesn’t have to be every January, but don’t keep the same one for years and years either.

And even with all this, if you suddenly notice your network running slower than usual, or you suspect someone might have your password (yes, that neighbor-slash-brother-in-law type who smiles WAY too much in the elevator and looks like a bit of a smart aleck), the best thing to do is change the password. Don’t think ‘my building’s full of old folks, I can’t picture any of them trying to hack my wifi’ because those old folks always have kids, friends, or their granddaughter’s boyfriend dropping by every so often, and any of them might take an interest in your wifi if the signal reaches them well enough.