A couple of general questions on WiFi & BT

[Amamba]

I'm no newbie to PDA but this is the first one with integrated WiFi that I've had - so I have a couple of questions:

1) I don't have any BT devices, and the fact that pressing "Radio On" button also turns on BT just annoys the heck out of me. Is there a way to reprogram this button to only turn WiFi ?

2) Since Axim doesn't seem to support AES (or is it WM5 fault ?) what do you think of the following setup, security wise:

- A home router with WPA / TKIP, key rotation every 10 minutes, hidden SSID and MAC filtering - would you trust this setup to, say, access your bank accounts ? I know that MAC filtering alone is not secure at all, but how about the whole setup ?

3) Any way to support AES ?

Thanks !

[bryanbellis]

For turning on just the WiFi element, I use WiFiPower from http://www.pbsite.net/sknight71/modu...op=MostPopular

[Mystik]

to fix the button thing... i never use the wifi-power-on button... really, i dunno what i COULD use it for, i'm just more of a stylus lover... dunno.

i hit the little wifi icon and hit power on, then jump into settings to see what it's connecting to (or maybe into site servey to see whats available)... but i digress.

BT isn't really necessary most of the time, and if you have it on, it's just gonna suck batteries (though, not much from my experience)...

as for encryption. you've been spooked... just so you know WEP, though it can be broken, most of the time, noone cares to break it. i probably COULD break into some local wifi hotspots near my house, but i have my own, there's no point. and passer-bys aren't gonna go through the effort. the only people you REALLY have to worry about *HACKING* into your wifi, is neighbors. basicly your immediate neighbors (on both sides, behind and in-front of your house... maybe even on angles) ... contrary to popular belief wifi signals don't go far. unless you have special equipment for long-range wifi.

so unless one of your neighbors is a professional hacker, i wouldn't worry about much more than WEP. though, if you're still concerned, i don't believe WPA has the same vunerabilities... sooo WPA-SPK is probably your preference here... don't bother changing the keys every ten minutes (why ten?) maybe every week if you're paranoid.... to my understanding, it would take about a week to crack WPA anyways... if someone were so inclined.

also, banking? well, banking on a WPA line... is well... it's like putting a lockbox in a safe...

first, you have your encrypted wifi channel... which is like a safe... especially with WPA. THEN, you'll have 128-bit encryption from your browser to your banks website, which is really really secure (i don't believe it's been cracked yet)... so really, even over OPEN wifi, doing banking is relatively safe. it would take a very long time, from a very dedicated person to crack the encryption on both.

[ikehiker]

First, I agree with the above comments regarding security.

One thing that hasn't been pointed out about the hardware button - it activates the last wireless setup you used. Out of the box, it turns on both, but if you just once use the Dell WLAN to turn just the WiFi on, each subsequent use of the hardware button will just turn it on (unless you use the PPC software to turn on BT).

[rohanch]

I agree with everyone else - your security is completely overkill! :)

1) It is very unlikely that anybody will try and sniff your wireless traffic in the first place. Even on a wireless network with all security off.

2) If someone does want to start reading your traffic, they need to break your security. WEP is enough to deter most people, but in the right conditions it can be broken in under about 30 minutes (I tried cracking a 128bit WEP key on my own network as a test and it took around 15 minutes). So avoid WEP and use WPA. WPA TKIP is, for all intents and purposes unbreakable unless you have a weak password. As long as you set up a fairly long (i.e. at least 8 characters), strong, non-dictionary-based passkey, you will be completely safe. As in it will take years for someone to break the key.

If you have a 10-character alphanumeric WPA passkey, it will take approx. 570,000 years to break it with one PC. And if you use a mix of lower-case and capitals, you're going to make they key literally hundreds of times longer to break. Nobody is going to go THAT far to read the traffic on your home network :)

MAC Filtering and Hidden SSID aren't necessary if you have WPA on - unlike WPA, they can both be defeated quite easily and wouldn't stop the people who sniff your details anyway. As long as you turn on WPA, you can turn off MAC filtering and hidden SSID if you want to make your life easier.

3) Even if someone did manage to decrypt your WPA encryption (again, practically impossible with a good key) then your bank details are separately encrypted by SSL, which is very difficult to crack in itself.

[Amamba]

Well, thanks to all who answered my question !

If it's an overkill, then I'm happy. :approve: Setting it was easy and the connection is just as good (or sh@tty) as before. The key rotation is a function of TKIP - I believe it uses the master key to establish the original connection, then rotates random keys at predefined intervals during the session.

MAC filtering and hidden SSID should make it just a tad harder to break in - I agree that by themselves they don't account to much.