Have I been hacked?

if i change my password protection to wpa2 from wpa-psk, if my router does not support wpa2 even though the setting for this encryption type is in the menu wats the worst that will happen it wont connect wireless?
 
are you rich?

are you famous?

are you powerful?

are you in a position to be blackmailed?

if the answer to all 4 is no then the chances of someone bothering to 'hack' you are minute - million to one.. not even that high...

25k of files? how do you know it was 25k of files? do you mean the router said 25k uploaded? (in which case its jsut general chatter)

you probably have a default wireless password or no password and a neighbour accidently connected to your wireless.... I have seen several peopel do this...
 
ooow i forgot illegal, do you have anything illegal on your PC (other than pirated files / software / music... if you do erase it then destroy the drive NOW (jsut to be safe)... (seriously)
 
Lee said:
I have mine locked down so that only approved mac addresses are allowed to connect. It's a pain to set up a new device (well takes 60 seconds longer...), but as far as I'm aware it's secure.
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bah beaten to it, but ill say it anyway... mac filtering = no security you gotta also enable encryption at the very least..
 
Burnsey et al, thanks for the heads up on the mac address spoofing thing. Didn't realise that sort of thing exisited... I do use WPA2 also (with a long key), so I'm as secure as I can get.
 
edscdk said:
are you rich?
are you famous?
are you powerful?
are you in a position to be blackmailed?

if the answer to all 4 is no then the chances of someone bothering to 'hack' you are minute - million to one.. not even that high...
Click to expand...

Fair enough. However, the chances of some kid with a wireless password cracking program having a go at your weakly secured wi-fi, not giving two ****s about who you are, is pretty decent!
 
liamcrane said:
I just delete my public folders as i dont want to share anything and if i decide to transfer files between to machines i just do it through team viewer :)
Click to expand...

NTFS permissions are easy. Don't have to faff with third party software to do something Windows can do all on its own.

Is there a way of knowing what encryption your router supports? i have a netgear and its using wpa-psk, there other other options when i log into the router like wpa2-psk, wpa-psk+wpa2-psk. Is it a matter of just trying all the different ones and see if it lets you connect?
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Just go for WPA2. I have noticed this crappy little netbook with XP doesn't seem to like WPA2, but since it isn't mine I don't care! Everything else connects just fine. :D

As an aside, unless you have some really dodgy router, it wont offer you an option it doesn't support.
 
edscdk said:
25k of files? how do you know it was 25k of files? do you mean the router said 25k uploaded? (in which case its jsut general chatter)

you probably have a default wireless password or no password and a neighbour accidently connected to your wireless.... I have seen several peopel do this...
Click to expand...

The router told me this other laptop was connected and it also told me it had either downloaded or uploaded 25k worth of files. There is a physical display on this thing that can be pretty handy. I realise that isn't much, but it could be enough for a key logger? That was my only concern really. This business with 4 open ports worries me too - I don't know what that means.

I had made sure my default passwords were changed prior to this incident. Admittedly it might be nothing at all, and I hope it isn't, but I have had a spate of strange goings on happen recently. All seems very coincidental.
 
AJK said:
Fair enough. However, the chances of some kid with a wireless password cracking program having a go at your weakly secured wi-fi, not giving two ****s about who you are, is pretty decent!
Click to expand...

Very true. People tend to hack wireless networks for fun, the ego boost... the buzz of doing something relatively intelligent and illegal. Wardriving is very popular... they don't care if you are rich or famous, it's all for the fun of doing it because they can.

However like so many other people have mentioned, now that you have switched to WPA2, that really should be enough to sicken off the casual war driver. They will probably move along to the next guy with wep :P

I honestly wouldn't worry about anyone putting a keylogger on your machine remotely. Most antivirus scanners pick them up easily these days. Routers have firewalls, windows has a firewall, you have AV, your networks encrypted, your files are encrypted. Honestly dont panic... bypassing all of these security features is far beyond the local 15 year old geek.

Just make sure your WPA2 is lengthy and using a combination of uppercase, lowercase, different characters and numbers.

P.S a lot of routers get it wrong, mine sometimes use to think things had connected also, when I was living in the countryside with no one around for miles... so it was definitely impossible that someone connected.

Hope I have put your mind to rest.
 
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