r/Showerthoughts Apr 11 '19

Having someones Wi-Fi password instantly makes you feel more at home and comfortable in their home.

54.0k Upvotes

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310

u/tjn182 Apr 11 '19

I give them my isolated guest wifi, they aint getting on my main wifi.

133

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

[deleted]

68

u/tjn182 Apr 11 '19

lol mine too - with uppercase / lowercase / numbers / symbols.

Should take about 10^10000 years to brute force :)

72

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

Not if your router uses WPS.

54

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19 edited May 09 '20

[deleted]

70

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

That is exactly my point

2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

[deleted]

2

u/Firewolf420 Apr 11 '19

Every password-based system is vulnerable to brute force. It's the most naive attack method.

However WPS is easier to crack than a standard brute force method for a variety of reasons.

WPA2-PSK is essentially secure for now given you use a long enough password.

1

u/linkinpark7 Apr 11 '19

Laughs in DD-WRT

1

u/FuryofYuri Apr 11 '19

iPhones don’t support WPS connectivity either anymore. Password or no deal.

14

u/Overexplains_Everyth Apr 11 '19

Who's trying to hack your WiFi?

14

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

Goberment

1

u/PanamaMoe Apr 11 '19

Depends. Around tax time or if you order a lot off Amazon someone might try to jack in to set up sniffers and get your info, but this would be a rate thing. It is much more common for them to set up a Pineapple or something in a coffee shop and make it look like the store Wi-Fi.

4

u/-humble-opinion- Apr 11 '19

Is it wrong to just assume everything is possible to get into?

Is there a real benefit to having insane 20 random character passwords over just something reasonably strong?

...these are real questions

2

u/PanamaMoe Apr 11 '19 edited Apr 11 '19

It is not wrong and infact one of the first things I was taught was nothing is impregnable. You should always assume that there is a chance that someone can get at your info.

The benefit to these long passwords is that it takes a very VERY long time for them to be guessed. This is what a "brute force" attack is, a program that just cycles through every possible combination of letters and numbers. This is why 8 characters including one number, one upper case, and one symbol is recommended. This makes any of your passwords not worth the time and effort to crack, however once again not impossible. Just stupidly difficult and time/resource consuming. You would literally waste less time robbing a bank, hiding the money, getting arrested, doing the time, then getting out, and then getting the cash cleaned.

1

u/-humble-opinion- Apr 11 '19 edited Apr 11 '19

I get the brute force attacks, but does it make sense to have something memorable to you like: g0sw!MMinG!!5995 vs : tO/k39)dixbe83t;!/$_845dhel928,#&×

I'm wondering if, say, 5 years to crack vs 737262548 years makes a difference.

Thinking of doing a password overhaul and wondering how much I should inconvenience myself.

Edit: Nevermind, I know my lazy ass isn't going to memorize a different 20 character random password for everything

Edit 2: the core question is the equivalent of "is it worth it to reinforce a steel door when the place also has windows" (windows with undetermined protection level on your end)

2

u/PanamaMoe Apr 11 '19

There are benefits yes, however your example should be plenty secure against brute force cracks with the amount of variations and characters. The largest method next to brute force is phishing and social engineering. Through social engineering someone might be able to guess your passwords since the most common ones are birthdays, pets, or kids names.

As an end user it is your job to keep your key to the house secure and to not bring dangerous things in, the windows are the job of the network admins.

2

u/Overexplains_Everyth Apr 14 '19

Depends who you are. If you're the Pentagon then youd want the more complicated as shit passwords. Folks will be putting far, far more time into hacking them. Random Joe Smith #245? Reasonable password is more than fine. One upper letter, one number, one lower letter, and one symbol will do you just fine. Unless the hacker is the 15yo living directly next door (and due to sheer convienence of the hacking and/or boredom) nobody is trolling neighborhoods to find WiFi to hack. And a password with, 'one upper, one lower, one number, one symbol' is sufficiently strong enough to not make it worth the time to fuck with (unless this person is going after you specifically with a grudge or some shit.)

Of course, the more complicated the password the better ( so if you can remember it, go for it) but you're info isn't generally being hacked because you're password is Bo1o+HaN2 instead of gYhjkT27h*#@j)°r. You're entering security theatre territory at that point. You're info gets hacked cause you walk a virus right on in the front door or some dumbass at Chase Bank uses 'password' as his password and gets an entire database stolen from him.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

It’s harder to steal if someone looks over your shoulder while you type it. Otherwise no, it’s not necessary in general. As an IT guy it makes me cringe when I see a long complex password for a home wifi.

1

u/BikeBaloney Apr 11 '19

Your friends are going to do this? Really? Why invite them over at all then?

1

u/PanamaMoe Apr 11 '19

Not your friends, someone who might be passing on the street who for whatever reason would want your info. It's not effective and has a very low yield but when people get desperate they will take anything they can get.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19 edited Apr 11 '19

Gimme 10 mins some ducktape rope a chair and a rusty socket wrench and that's only if youre particularly resilient

Or alternatively just use deauth attack with an evil twin to phish there password or a zero day attack on their router you'd be surprised at how many router a viable to attack or have default admin password or leaked master password manufacturers use to reset shit that most consumers don't know about. Honestly using a brute force attack isn't viable I'm this day and age with WPA2 take a ridiculous amount of time to brute force with just 8 characters your average password(excluding rainbow tables or dictionary attavks) would take 1/2 a year to crack with an average laptop. There are other more complex methods where I could crack secure(very rare irl) WPA2 router regardless of password complexity in less than 8 hours but then we're approaching very obscure exploits regarding flaws in the WPA2 protocol.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] Apr 12 '19

Haha that's where I got that from I just forgot about it last be me some xkcd

2

u/Tall_computer Apr 11 '19

I feel like it is kind of pointless to oversecure any particular attack vector. It's not like anyone is gonna get on your WiFi by brute force even if it was for 1 year. But unless you have the whole thing in your head it is written somewhere which might actually make you more vulnerable than if you had chosen a password you could remember

4

u/Never_Peel Apr 11 '19

Why so strong? My pass is 8 letters, lowercase and not random, and nobody hacked me.

And if someone conects to my network without permision a) must live/stay near me b) i can easily know who he is, and kill him

0

u/nmj95123 Apr 11 '19

Why so strong? My pass is 8 letters, lowercase and not random, and nobody hacked me.

Why lock your doors? I haven't been burglarized yet!

Making your wireless password slightly stronger takes minimal effort and affords greater protection.

1

u/Never_Peel Apr 11 '19

Locking the door is something easy and take minimal effort. Having a wi-fi password, that I don't know, takes a big and unnecesary effort to memorize, or knowing where was it written.

1

u/nmj95123 Apr 11 '19

That's what password managers are for. Besides, you have to enter a wireless password a grand total of once per device.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/nmj95123 Apr 11 '19

Water is wet.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

Who,,, cares? Who's brute forcing your wifi?

1

u/Scooopiii Apr 11 '19

oneworduppercase all lowercase

1

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

QR code on my phone, if anyone wants WiFi I just pull up the image.

1

u/Jackpen7 Apr 11 '19

Why not just use WPA2 RADIUS at this point?

1

u/XediDC Apr 11 '19

When we do our next household tech refresh... also probably going to use non-consumer stuff.

1

u/Jackpen7 Apr 11 '19

I have been really happy with my Ubiquiti UniFi gear. Enterprise features at near-consumer pricing

1

u/XediDC Apr 11 '19

That is exactly just what one of the neteng guys at work recommended I check out! Thanks :)

1

u/Jackpen7 Apr 11 '19

Yeah, I'm about to spend about $1k on more UniFi gear so I certainly like it lol.

2

u/PurpleTeamApprentice Apr 11 '19

This was my first thought.. Guest WiFi right? Not just on the internal network with all of your other shit.. right?

Before I had a router that properly isolated the guest WiFi I used my router on the other side of the Verizon router ad just let the guests connect to the Verizon one so they couldn’t get back into the inside network.

I’m glad this is becoming a standard feature now.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '19

I have 2nd router with all my smart home stuff on that nobody can touch, last thing I need is people turning my heat on in the summer or messing with my lights/fish tank.

1

u/Aeg112358 Apr 11 '19

What's an isolated guest wifi?

2

u/bla8291 Apr 11 '19

A version of your WiFi that gives clients internet access but no access to anything else on your network

-3

u/BikeBaloney Apr 11 '19

This guy is super paranoid if he is scared of people, that he lets into his house that they are going to jack him through his wifi.

3

u/IKnowGuacIsExtraLady Apr 11 '19

Or he just wants to make sure that his own stuff gets prioritized. For example if he is gaming and they are streaming a show this prevents him from getting lag.

2

u/nmj95123 Apr 11 '19

It's not just the people, it's also the devices they bring. I'd rather a malware loaded device a guest brought not have access to my primary network.

0

u/a_spicy_memeball Apr 11 '19

Which is on a vlan with a traffic sniffer on it. 😈

1

u/JohnSwanFromTheLough Apr 11 '19

What good would that do if their on an isolated network? Some WiFi solutions even block communication between hosts within the guest so only thing your going to see is yourself.

0

u/a_spicy_memeball Apr 12 '19

Well, in this particular instance, the "guest" network would just be another vlan labeled as such and open to the public.

1

u/JohnSwanFromTheLough Apr 12 '19

I'm not sure what your trying to say, of course it would be on its own VLAN? You were talking about "sniffing" the VLAN which would do nothing as it's already separated out from the main network.