Is someone?....

[animeal]

Hi,
I have broadband through cable co. .. I have also a wireless broadband connection setup. I connect to it on my laptop.. Anyways.. i went into "control panel" today and found 4 connection names(not current i think..but just which ones connected"). 2 were from laptop and another laptop that I own...however ...the names of 2 others i dont recognize..I think someone is "hacking" or "listening" into my netwok.. I have WEP enable..changed SSID name to something less obvious..and made it invisible (meaning.. ppl will have to figure out the name of the network to connect to ..instead of seeing it on the network list ..so to speak").. First of all.. Im shocked...2nd of all...Is there any other steps I should take? I have WIn XP firewall setup just in case.... Any other security measures Im missing? Please help...and thank you in advance for your reply !

[Midknyte]

you can enable mac address filtering. you would need to get the mac address of each system in your network, then manually add them to your router's mac filter.

please look at the best of networking for wireless security guides.

Best of Networking

[Kandar]

Win XP firewall is OK but it’s not great. It only provides inbound protection, not outbound. I recommend that you disable the XP firewall get yourself a good independent firewall Zone Alarm Pro has been a good firewall for me but I would hold off on the new version as I am hearing that there are quite a few issues that Zonelabs have to sort out yet and it’s causing lots of problems for people at the moment. Outpost is a good option. http://www.agnitum.com/

[animeal]

when I said Control Panel.... I ment my wireless box CP..not winxp cp ...Oops anyways..thnx for the help so far boys...but the Network link that was provided above kinda useless for me..REson: WAY to many links leading who knows where....all look similiar..I would need to spend 12 hours to go through all of em and see which one I really need...

[animeal]

Is there a way to know who else connected to the network? Maybe some sweet program out there? Im curious if my neighbors are "stealing" my internet..

[Strawbs]

>AirSnare< will give you the mac addresses of any connection it finds - but you may have to read a little on how to use it.

[Showstoppermd]

A lot of routers have a built in logging option. Not sure if it affects performance, but at least you could "see" who's do what. Some will even let you redirect the file to computer for a longer monitoring periods.

[Midknyte]

You can also use Snort. Here's a link for the windows version:
http://www.codecraftconsultants.com/snort.aspx

If you use mac filtering, that will prevent foreign mac addresses from connecting to the router. It's better to stop the thief at the front door.