Hmm, let see heres a short list of they might do. Of course after many of them the authorities would come knocking on your door and might even take your PCs and other elctronics as evidence. Sure you'd get them back eventually, but....

1. Distribute a new virus, worm, trojan etc.
2. Setup a file share with copyrighted material.
3. Sniff your network traffic and grab your email passwords right out of the air.
4. Set up a man in the middle exploit and gain access to your more sensitive passwords and information.
5. Log in to your machine using the default administrator password and totally thrash your data, or just steal it.
6. How about full fledged ID theft. It certainly could happen.
7. Reconfigure your network so that they are now in control. You'd be forced to hard reset it to regain control.


Of course at the same time I true hacker could probably break into your secured network and do the same things if they really wanted to. They probably won't though, since your next door neighbor has a wide open "low hanging fruit" network.

The important question you didn't ask is "How secure should my network be" and my answer to that is just secure enough that it doesn't inconvenience the users but that it can deter the potential attackers.

In my environment where my neighbors are far from tech savvy and they have wide open networks, Simple MAC address filtering with low level encryption is more than enough.

My cable company sucks, and I rely on 3 of my neighborhood's unsecure wireless networks to be able to finish up any work I am doing before i can call my cable co to tell them its down. (goes down a couple times a week, but they "never see a problem") I have left letters in their mailbox telling them step by step for each manufacturor how to enable wep and select a password. have any of them done it? no.
Im not looking around on their network, and I have told 2 of my neightbors that i have hopped on their dsl connection for about 10 min a pop and they strangely are ok with it.
One neighbor about a year ago was so happy that i showed him how to enable wep that he bought me 3 cases of beer that summer for a cookout we were having. He came up to me and told me that this was for helping him out with his wireless network. I still do not trust wep completely as there are wep crackers out there.
You want security? go wired.
You want speed? go wired.
You want convience? go wireless.
Thats the only upside to wireless. I can go outside in my garden and still have great connectivity while i am working.

I have both a wired and a wireless network. They are both on completely different ip ranges, I only have my laptop hooked up to the wireless network. If someone has a couple hours to kill and wants to crack my wireless, they arent going too far unless they have the static routes. And hell, I';; give em a beer for trying.


(yes i know their are always to find broadcasting traffic)

If you have an unsecured wireless network, it basically opens up your internet access to anyone who lives close to you. This is especially true if you live in the city or in a development in the suburbs. Some people may even accidently be connected to your network just due to the default settings on that persons wireless card.

For the most part, I don't think anyone will be using your internet access to due illegal things, but those people are out there. Some people wardrive which means that they just get in their car and drive around until they find wireless "hotspots". People don't even need laptops anymore, I have a PDA that has wireless on it.

If people hijack your internet and do bad, bad things, it will be reported under your IP address that you get from your ISP.

Generally if you secure your wireless network with WEP or WAP no one is going to really try to break into it.
"Wardrivers" will not stop at a secured connection and try to crack it because they know there is always an unsecure one lying around somewhere.


If your concerned about them hacking into your "shared folders" you can specify a specific port range for wireless devices on your network, and then you can disable certain protocols for those ranges, like Netbios and stuff.

Its also best NOT to broadcast your SSID, and also make sure your router does NOT respond to ping queries from the internet.


Even better if you have lets say 4 computers that you use. You can disable DHCP for your wireless network and create 4 static routes. Then you can reserve those routes for specific MAC addresses, so if anyone even finds your static routes, they would also have to figure out your devices MAC address, and then try to change their MAC address to match yours.

These are basic tweaks that can easily enhance your security.

If you are really concerned about private folders/files. If you have WindowsXP then it comes with a built in encryption system ( Well I know XP Pro has it, not sure about Home Edition ).

If you encrypt your files it then becomes extremely hard for someone to steal your information, because then they have to find they key to unlock and read the files.

people have said that using a mac filter on your router works! but i have read in other forums on this board that you can crack this mac filter, is that possible!

also, what is the best encryption method and does encryption slow down your internet access and data bandwidth?

Sorry, but this board is a technical solutions forum, not a cracking board.
Prabably some people are able to crack such things, but this is illegal, and helping doing illegal things is not allowed here.
I acknowledge that mac filter is not absolutely save because some people may crack it, but with a mac filter you are protected from most of people who, like me, will be stopped because they are not familiar with this.

Usually most routers will have two encryption algorithms you can use. WEP or WPA. WPA is more secure than WEP so if you have that feature, use it over WEP. The more characters (and more random...not words in the dictionary) it is, the better the security. Changing your WPA/WEP password periodically is also very helpful. Even if someone wants to use your wireless connection, it will be almost impossible since you will be changing the password from time to time (this won't give them enough time to crack it in most cases if using WPA with a strong password).

Regarding whether it will slow things down or not, it probably will a little. I too have asked this question before in the past. See this topic.

on the topic of security.. depends on what soperating system you are using.. base on my self experiences, on windows with unsecured wireless connection being broadcast and a capable wireless snoop, you entirely exposed you whole computer using windows vulnirability attacks which are so many.

WEP or WPA, which is much secure depends also on the manufacturer and geo locations. mostly, i will go with WPA due to its much rigid design though implementations have variations from manufacturer to manufacturer. sadly, there was no global standard here yet though i can recommend using sysco stuffs like the lately purchased aironet.

If you make your network invisable to those who don't know the names (like the splash screen of XP logon), and give it a password, they have to go through all that before decrypting your messages. Also, you can change the ssl keys or whatever it is. And you can limit what can connect. And you can make it not stretch further than your house.

So on a public network, like Starbucks, it's not safe, but home networks can be almost perfectly safe.

If you have important, personal or confidential on your computer that is shared, people might be able to look at them. who knows what people can do sometimes?