Free Wireless Security Tools

wireless security tools

Is there any better price than free when you're looking for a new tool? These security tools will help monitor your network and keep your data safe, for free!

NetStumbler

NetStumbler displays wireless access points, SSIDs, channels, whether WEP encryption is enabled and signal strength. NetStumbler can connect with GPS technology to accurately log the precise location of access points.

MiniStumbler

A smaller version of NetStumbler designed to work on PocketPC 3.0 and PocketPC 2002 platforms. It provides support for ARM, MIPS and SH3 CPU types.

WEPCrack

WEPCrack was the first of the WEP encryption cracking utilities. WEPCrack is an open-source tool used to break 802.11 WEP keys. You can also download WEPCrack for Linux.

Airsnort

Airsnort is a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool which cracks WEP encryption keys. AirSnort passively monitors wireless transmissions and automatically computes the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered. 

BTScanner

Btscanner allows you to extract as much information as possible from a Bluetooth device without the requirement to pair. It extracts HCI and SDP information and maintains an open connection to monitor the RSSI and link quality.

FakeAP

The polar opposite of hiding your network by disabling SSID broadcasts- Black Alchemy's Fake AP generates thousands of counterfeit 802.11b access points. As part of a honeypot or as an instrument of your site security plan, Fake AP confuses Wardrivers, NetStumblers, Script Kiddies, and other scanners.

Kismet

Kismet is an 802.11 wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system. Kismet identifies networks by passively collecting packets and detecting standard named networks, detecting (and given time, decloaking) hidden networks, and inferring the presence of non-beaconing networks via data traffic.

Redfang

Redfang v2.5 is an enhanced version from @Stake of the original Redfang application that finds non-discoverable Bluetooth devices by brute-forcing the last six bytes of the device's Bluetooth address and doing a read_remote_name().

SSID Sniff

A tool to use when looking to discover access points and save captured traffic. Comes with a configured script and supports Cisco Aironet and random prism2 based cards.

WiFi Scanner

WifiScanner analyzes traffic and detects 802.11b stations and access points. It can listen alternatively on all 14 channels, write packet information in real time, search access points and associated client stations. All network traffic may be saved in the libpcap format for post analysis.

wIDS

wIDS is a wireless IDS. It detects the jamming of management frames and could be used as a wireless honeypot. Data frames can also be decrypted on the fly and re-injected onto another device.

WIDZ

WIDZ is a proof of concept IDS system for 802.11 wireless networks. It guards access points (AP's) and monitors local frequencies for malicious activity. It detects scans, association floods, and bogus/Rogue AP's. It can also be integrated with SNORT or RealSecure.

Cisco Security Certifications

cisco wireless security

What’s the number one thing that keeps your CEO up at night? Security. On average a security breach takes 186 days to discover¹, and costs nearly $4 million² to manage. That’s why security continues to be one of the fastest growing fields in IT.

Cybersecurity job growth postings have increased 94%³ in the last several years. This fast-rising demand continues to push salaries higher. So, if you are just starting out in your career or you are a seasoned professional, there is great opportunity in security.

Through networking of all kinds remains a white-hot IT concern and technology area, nothing is hotter than wireless technologies for everything from local area networking with 802.11ad to the widespread proliferation and adoption of fourth-generation (4G) wireless wide area networking technologies, such as LTE (with 5G now also starting to make its debut.)

The five certifications we cite in this article represent a small sample of the wireless IT certifications available in today's marketplace. This year, we continue to feature two ever-popular Cisco certifications – the CCNA and CCNP Enterprise – along with the CWNA and CWSP credentials from the Certified Wireless Network Professional organization. Rounding out our top five list is the CompTIA Network+ credential.

Salaries for wireless-savvy professionals vary considerably. According to SimplyHired, entry-level wireless networking professionals can expect to make roughly $67,000, although there were highs reported at nearly $154,000. Of course, these are just average salaries. Indeed, other factors, such as job role and experience, greatly influence earning potential. When looking at salaries by job role rather than individual certification, you'll find average salaries are much higher. For example, SimplyHired reports average earnings for network architects at more than $130,000, with earnings on the high end at almost $181,000.

In preparation for this article, we conducted a random survey of various IT job boards to see what certifications are being requested by prospective employers. In reviewing the results, it's important to remember that factors, such as geography, the current climate of the employment market, and the complexity of the cert, influence outcomes.

You can expect to see lower numbers on more senior certifications, because, quite frankly, they're more difficult to earn. Thus, fewer people possess them as compared to entry- and mid-level wireless certs.

What is the best entry-level IT certification?

entry level it certification

Start a career in it technology

The Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) certification is an entry-level credential that validates fundamental technology skills and knowledge among students and job-seekers who are pursuing a career in technology.  MTA addresses a wide range of critical technology concepts with exams that are designed to assess and validate core technical concepts in three primary areas: Developer, Database, and IT Professional.

As the preferred path to Microsoft’s Certified Professional exams, such as Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) and Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD), MTA is the ideal starting point for anyone interested in starting a career in technology.

As businesses continue to rely on increasingly complex information systems, the need for experienced IT professionals continues to grow. Individuals with particular IT certifications are even more sought-after since the rigorous exams and certification prerequisites showcase both deep knowledge and real-world experience.

There’s also evidence that IT certifications can boost earning potential. A recent survey showed that 23% of IT professionals experienced a 20% salary increase after getting certified.1 According to CompTIA, 72% of employers actually require IT certifications for certain positions, and 92% believe IT certifications help ensure the credibility of their IT staff.2          

We looked at over a dozen popular IT certifications and chose the best—those with the highest demand, earning potential, and opportunities for advancement. These are our top picks. 

About CompTIA Security+

security exam objectives

Information security definition

Information security, sometimes abbreviated to infosec, is a set of practices intended to keep data secure from unauthorized access or alterations, both when it's being stored and when it's being transmitted from one machine or physical location to another. You might sometimes see it referred to as data security. As knowledge has become one of the 21st century's most important assets, efforts to keep information secure have correspondingly become increasingly important.

Information security vs. cybersecurity

Because information technology has become the accepted corporate buzzphrase that means, basically, "computers and related stuff," you will sometimes see information security and cybersecurity used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, cybersecurity is the broader practice of defending IT assets from attack, and information security is a specific discipline under the cybersecurity umbrella. Network security and application security are sister practices to infosec, focusing on networks and app code, respectively.

Obviously, there's some overlap here. You can't secure data transmitted across an insecure network or manipulated by a leaky application. As well, there is plenty of information that isn't stored electronically that also needs to be protected. Thus, the infosec pro's remit is necessarily broad.

Information security principles

The basic components of information security are most often summed up by the so-called CIA triad: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

• Confidentiality is perhaps the element of the triad that most immediately comes to mind when you think of information security. Data is confidential when only those people who are authorized to access it can do so; to ensure confidentiality, you need to be able to identify who is trying to access data and block attempts by those without authorization. Passwords, encryption, authentication, and defense against penetration attacks are all techniques designed to ensure confidentiality.
• Integrity means maintaining data in its correct state and preventing it from being improperly modified, either by accident or maliciously. Many of the techniques that ensure confidentiality will also protect data integrity—after all, a hacker can't change data they can't access—but there are other tools that help provide a defense of integrity in depth: checksums can help you verify data integrity, for instance, and version control software and frequent backups can help you restore data to a correct state if need be. Integrity also covers the concept of non-repudiation: you must be able to prove that you've maintained the integrity of your data, especially in legal contexts.
• Availability is the mirror image of confidentiality: while you need to make sure that your data can't be accessed by unauthorized users, you also need to ensure that it can be accessed by those who have the proper permissions. Ensuring data availability means matching network and computing resources to the volume of data access you expect and implementing a good backup policy for disaster recovery purposes.

In an ideal world, your data should always be kept confidential, in its correct state, and available; in practice, of course, you often need to make choices about which information security principles to emphasize, and that requires assessing your data. If you're storing sensitive medical information, for instance, you'll focus on confidentiality, whereas a financial institution might emphasize data integrity to ensure that nobody's bank account is credited or debited incorrectly.

Information security policy

The means by which these principles are applied to an organization take the form of a security policy. This isn't a piece of security hardware or software; rather, it's a document that an enterprise draws up, based on its own specific needs and quirks, to establish what data needs to be protected and in what ways. These policies guide the organization's decisions around procuring cybersecurity tools, and also mandate employee behavior and responsibilities.

Among other things, your company's information security policy should include:

• A statement describing the purpose of the infosec program and your overall objectives
• Definitions of key terms used in the document to ensure shared understanding
• An access control policy, determining who has access to what data and how they can establish their rights
• A password policy
• A data support and operations plan to ensure that data is always available to those who need it
• Employee roles and responsibilities when it comes to safeguarding data, including who is ultimately responsible for information security

One important thing to keep in mind is that, in a world where many companies outsource some computer services or store data in the cloud, your security policy needs to cover more than just the assets you own. You need to know how you'll deal with everything from personally identifying information stored on AWS instances to third-party contractors who need to be able to authenticate to access sensitive corporate info.

How to Enhance your Home Wireless Network Security

security wireless

In many cases, once a Wireless router has been installed, we find a place in our home for it and forget about it. As long as all our devices are set up and connected via the Wi-fi network, that’s all that matters, right? Wrong!

Probably many of you don’t realize, but the Internet router is one of the most important devices in our home. It’s the gateway to our Internet access and also prone to exploits by cybercriminals who can sneak into our devices and get access to our system.

Let’s not forget that we live in the age of data breaches, ransomware attacks, and many other online threats. Thus, you should be worried about the security of your home network and take all the needed security measures to increase Wifi security.

The only measure most people use to protect their home network is to set up a password and prevent neighbors and other people from taking control of your data. But we have to be more serious about security and do more than just setting a simple password. A serious risk is that an online criminal might exploit your poor Wi-fi security measures and “listen” to your traffic in order to retrieve sensitive information or take advantage of your network to launch malicious attacks such as Man-in-the-Middle attacks, network sniffing or data theft.

Though relatively easy to use and access, Wi-Fi networks are not always SECURE networks. Wi-fi comes with lots of security issues, and it’s worth reminding about the Krack vulnerability found in the Wireless Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol which affected all devices connected via Wi-fi.

For this reason, learning how to secure your wireless home network against cybercriminals is a wise and smart move. Given how many Internet of Things devices you may own, making sure your network is extra safe carries even more weight, even though sometimes taking care of your cybersecurity can be a tedious but necessary task.

In this article, you will learn how you can better secure your home network and decrease the chances of getting your valuable data compromised.

Use these steps below to enhance the security of your home wireless network:

Step 1. Change the name of your default home network

If you want to better secure your home network, the first thing you should do is to change the name of your Wi-Fi network, also known as the SSID (Service Set Identifier).

While giving your Wi-Fi a somewhat provocative name such as “Can’t hack this” may backfire at times, other names such as “this is not a wifi” or “too fly for a wifi” are perfectly acceptable.

Changing your Wi-Fi’s default name makes it harder for malicious attackers to know what type of router you have. If a cybercriminal knows the manufacturer name of your router, they will know what vulnerabilities that model has and then try to exploit them.

We strongly advise not to call your home network something like “John’s Wi-Fi”. You don’t want them to know at first glance which wireless network is yours when there are probably three or four other neighboring Wi-Fis.

Also, remember that disclosing too much personal information on a wireless network name may expose you to an identity theft operation.

Here’s a step-by-step and simple guide that explains how you can easily change the name of your wireless network.

Step 2. Make sure you set a strong and unique password to secure your wireless network

You probably know that every wireless router comes pre-set with a default username and password, which is needed in the first place to install and connect your router. The worst part: it’s easy for hackers to guess it, especially if they know the manufacturer.

So, make sure you change them both immediately.

A good wireless password should be at least 20 characters long and include numbers, letters, and various symbols.

Use this guide to set up a strong password for your network. Friends coming over for a visit may complain about the unusual length of your password, but this might discourage them from needlessly consuming your data with boring Facebook or Instagram posts.

Step 3. Increase your Wi-Fi security by activating network encryption

Wireless networks come with multiple encryption languages, such as WEP, WPA or WPA2.

To better understand this terminology, WPA2 stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 and is both a security protocol and a current standard in the industry (WPA2 networks are almost everywhere) and encrypts traffic on Wi-Fi networks. It also replaces the older and less secure WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and is an upgrade of the original WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) technology. Since 2006, all Wi-Fi certified products should use WPA2 security.

WPA2 AES is also a standard security system now, so all wireless networks are compatible with it. If you want to enable WPA2 encryption on your Wireless router, use these six steps. If you are using a TP-Link wireless router, here’s how to secure your wireless network.

The good news is that the WPA3 is already here and will replace WPA2. The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced its next-generation wireless network security standard which aims to solve a common security issue: open Wi-Fi networks. More than that, it comes with security enhancements and includes a suite of features to simplify Wi-fi security configuration for users and service providers.

Step 4. Turn off the wireless home network when you’re not at home

In order to secure your network, we strongly recommend you to disable the wireless home network, in case of extended periods of non-use. You should do the same thing with all your devices that are using Ethernet cables or when you won’t be at home.

By doing this, you are closing any windows of opportunity malicious hackers might attempt to get access to it while you are away.

Here are a few advantages of disabling your wireless network:

• Security reasons – Turning off your network devices, it minimizes the chances of becoming a target for hackers.
• Surge protection – When you power off your network device, you also lower the possibility of being damaged by electric power surges;
• Noise reduction –  Although the modern home networks are much quieter these days, disabling your wireless home network can add calmness to your home.

Step 5. Where is the router located in your home?

You probably haven’t thought about this in the first, but where is your Wi-Fi place in your home can also have an impact on your security.

Place the wireless router as close as possible to the middle of your house. Why? First of all, it will provide equal access to the Internet to all the rooms in your home. Secondly, you don’t want to have your wireless signal range reach too much outside your home, where it can be easily intercepted by malicious persons.

For this reason, we recommend not to place your wireless router close to a window since there’s nothing to block the signal going outside your home.

Step 6. Use a strong network administrator password to increase Wi-Fi security

To set up your wireless router, you usually need to access an online platform or site, where you can make several changes to your network settings.

Most Wi-fi routers come with default credentials such as “admin” and “password” which are such an easy for malicious hackers to break into.

Did you know that the number of wireless networks has increased dramatically over the last 8 years? In 2010 there were 20 million Wi-Fi networks around the globe, and in 8 years, that number increased to400 million.

Smartphones, laptops, tablets and other devices have driven this growth, and because of how expensive data plans are, most people choose to connect their device to wireless Internet connections.

What are the main threats to wireless security?

wireless network security

With the deployment of wireless LANs in almost any type of environment, the risk of attacks occurring on wireless networks goes up. A number of different reasons are behind this, but it mainly stems from a lack of wireless network knowledge.

Unlike a wired network which requires physical access to a device, a wireless network can be targeted and exploited from a distance. This article reviews some basic wireless security fundamentals and reviews some of the most common threats that exist when deploying wireless networks.

Wireless Security Basics

There are a number of basic fundamentals that a person or company needs to be aware of when deploying a wireless network. The first is a basic understanding of what frequencies will be used by the equipment being deployed; this is very important when deploying a wireless network as it affects the amount of interference that the network will be subject to depending on the specific environment.

At this point in time, there are two main frequency bands that are used for wireless LANs (802.11); these include the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. From a security perspective, the choice of frequency does not greatly affect the security risk of the network. What it does affect is the number of available non-overlapping channels that are available on the network; for the most part this will not affect security except when an attacker is attempting to jam or block a specific frequency to force wireless endpoints to switch Access Points (AP).

Endpoint devices identify wireless networks using a service set identifier (SSID) along with a set of security parameters. On most wireless deployments, the SSID is broadcast from the APs allowing the clients the ability to easily associate. It is possible to not broadcast the SSID which provides a little protection from those wireless network attackers with little operating knowledge; however for an experienced wireless attacker this is not a very effective security measure.

The real security for a wireless network comes from the selection of a proven security technique, there have been a number of different security techniques deployed that have been broken. As of this writing the most secure technique is IEEE 802.11i which is also known as WPA2. This standard provides two different modes of operation including one typically referred to as Personal or Pre-Shared Key (PSK) and Enterprise:

• WPA2-Personal - utilizes a shared key that is communicated to both sides (AP and client) before establishing a wireless connection; this key is then used to secure the traffic.
• WPA2-Enterprise - utilizes the IEEE 802.1x protocol to authenticate a wireless client using an authentication server before traffic is allowed.

Common Wireless Threats

There are a number of main threats that exist to wireless LANS, these include:

• Rogue Access Points/Ad-Hoc Networks
• Denial of Service
• Configuration Problems (Mis-Configurations/Incomplete Configurations)
• Passive Capturing

Let's go through each of these in more detail

Is the CompTIA A+ hard?

comptia salary

The three primary entry-level CompTIA certifications are the A+, Network+ and Security+, and because so many people start their careers focusing on one or more of these certifications, the question often comes up about which certification to take first and which of these you really need for your career.

Should you take the CompTIA A+ before Network+?  You don’t need to, and probably shouldn’t take the CompTIA A+ before the Network+ certification exam, because if you’re entering into field of cyber security, your focus should be on obtaining the Network+ and Security+ instead.

I’m sure this response brings up quite a few questions in everyone’s mind, so let’s discuss why skipping the A+ is practical and why you should go for the Network+ and Security+ instead.