Here's a big joke amoungst us techies:
Q: Who's the biggest wireless ISP?
A: Linksys
What is really meant here is that so many home users are installing wireless routers (Linksys being one of the most popular)
with absolutely no security...which then enables anyone within 100-200 feet of your home (e.g.: parked in the cul-de-sac) to jack into
your wireless router and surf the Internet using YOUR connection...or worse yet to monitor all your communications.
In my own personal experiences, I find that 50-75% of the access points I encounter to be unsecured...great for us, very bad for you.
Here are the specific risks you expose yourself to when you fail to secure your Wireless router:
- Degradation of service - slower performance because your neighbors are piggybacking on your connection
- Interruption of service - if your neighbor gets infected and starts spraying malicious stuff it's going to show up as coming from YOUR connection...thus YOUR service gets cutoff by your ISP
- Higher risk of compromise - your wireless router generally acts as a firewall, protecting all systems behind it...when you let your neighbors connect wirelessly you are letting them in behind your firewall, thus exposing your computers
- Eavesdropping - with the exception of encrypted communications (e.g. HTTPS or SSH sessions) anyone in range of your wireless network can eavesdrop on all your communications, including capturing your email userID and passwords, etc...
Solution: Enable WPA (WiFi Protected Access) on your router AND all computers connected to it