Mergath Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 (edited) According to wiki: "A major security flaw was revealed in December 2011 that affects wireless routers with the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) feature, which most recent models have and enable by default. The flaw allows a remote attacker to recover the WPS PIN and, with it, the router's WPA/WPA2 password in a few hours.[2] Users have been urged to turn off the WPS feature, [3] although this may not possible on some router models." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Setup I've been having all sorts of issues with my wifi this week. Every other time I tried to load a page, it would crap out on me. I went in, disabled the wps feature and changed our pre-shared key, and suddenly, it's working beautifully. I'm pretty sure someone had hacked our wireless and was sucking up all the bandwidth doing god-knows-what. Anyway, it looks like this issue was only discovered recently, so I thought I'd share this in case anyone hadn't heard about it yet. ETA: In case that confused anyone, you still have a password set up on your wireless router, it's just a different kind than the basic wps pin. Hopefully, if anyone has questions, someone more techy can explain this better. Edited December 31, 2011 by Mergath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awisha. Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 Thanks for this. I showed hubby and he went and had a look at the router settings. Apparently someone had gotten in and turned off and changed settings!! Dh is now letting his friend know who has the same router as us. Thankyou so much :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted December 31, 2011 Author Share Posted December 31, 2011 Thanks for this. I showed hubby and he went and had a look at the router settings. Apparently someone had gotten in and turned off and changed settings!! Dh is now letting his friend know who has the same router as us. Thankyou so much :-) Happy to help. :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfern Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 Thanks, will pass on to DH. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punchie Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 I looked at the link, but *how* do you disable it? I don't see where it says how to do it, only what the types of the WPS set-ups are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
posybuddy Posted December 31, 2011 Share Posted December 31, 2011 Hubby says thankyouverymuch. Router is now fixed. :001_smile: (He's also an IT guy, so he very much enjoyed reading the articles you linked and has been talkingtalkingtalking to me about the technical details all. morning. long.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted January 1, 2012 Author Share Posted January 1, 2012 I looked at the link, but *how* do you disable it? I don't see where it says how to do it, only what the types of the WPS set-ups are. It varies depending on what kind of router you have. You have to go into your router's manual and figure out how to do it from there, or you can call your ISP. Sorry I can't be more helpful, I'm not exactly a technological genius myself, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted January 1, 2012 Author Share Posted January 1, 2012 (He's also an IT guy, so he very much enjoyed reading the articles you linked and has been talkingtalkingtalking to me about the technical details all. morning. long.) Sorry! :tongue_smilie: :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandellie4 Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 The article says that the person hacking to get access needs your PIN, right? The article mentions that the PIN is on the side of the unit. So if I haven't had any neighbors over to my house since I bought the router about three months ago, nothing to worry about...maybe? Sandy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted January 1, 2012 Author Share Posted January 1, 2012 The article says that the person hacking to get access needs your PIN, right? The article mentions that the PIN is on the side of the unit. So if I haven't had any neighbors over to my house since I bought the router about three months ago, nothing to worry about...maybe? Sandy The way I understood it, they have some way to get the PIN. It's always eight digits, so there are a finite number of possibilities and they have some way of going through them until they get them right. Or something. Someone who has a better handle on this really needs to come in and explain, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tree Frog Posted January 1, 2012 Share Posted January 1, 2012 The way I understood it, they have some way to get the PIN. It's always eight digits, so there are a finite number of possibilities and they have some way of going through them until they get them right. Or something. Someone who has a better handle on this really needs to come in and explain, lol. Here's an article that explains it a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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