Re: Choice of wireless adapter: Netgear or Linksys, USB or PCI, security?

> 3) As an aside, my housemates do not have WEP enabled but do have an approved MAC address list. They have changed the default router
> password to a non-trivial one. Is this suffcient security for general use or should I tell them to enable WEP anyway?

Well it depends on what they want to do. It's quite likely that the
management of the router is done via a web or telnet interface. If so,
that password, however complex is transmitted in clear text. Given that
they have no wireless encryption, it *could* be sniffed.

However, as ever the likelihood of someone sniffing it for the odd
moment when they make a change is probably unlikely.

On the other hand, the MAC list is trivial to defeat by cloning and WEP
is pretty simple to crack too, better to use an alternate encryption
method.

David.
.