Another reason to secure your Wifi

Indian police investigating bomb blasts which killed 42 people traced an email claiming responsibility to a Mumbai apartment, they immediately raided the apartment in which a American national was staying.But after through investigation the police came to a conclusion that the American national was not the one who send that email but his Internet Connection was used to pass on the information, He had an Open Wifi connection without any Encryption and the range of the Wifi was accessible at quite good distance.Now the American was not involved but the terrorists used his open wifi connection and sent an email and he got in trouble. This is just another reason you should secure your PC as well as your Internet infrastructure because the moron's are getting smarter. 1) They used open wifi to send an email 2) they used microchips in the bombs that they planted in surat (good that the microchips were faulty and failed).What should people do to secure their Wifi ?1) First log everything at the router level, email the logs periodically to a email address to keep as backup.2) Use Encryption, WEP or WPA - WEP is quite easy to crack so I would recommend using WPA.3) Change default passwords immediately as soon as the technical support guy leaves your house.4) Switch off the router/modem when not in use.5) Monitor your internet bills because a unusual spike is a clear indication of misuse of your internet.6) Configuring MAC Address Filtering in your Modem/router so that only your machine gets connected to internet.7) If you use only 1 machine for Wifi reduce the DHCP address pool lease so that only one machine is connected to the internet at a time, or better of use static IP Address.One more thing i would like to add is the modem/router installation team of the ISP should take the lead and stop people from using Open Wifi and WEP, they should assist them in setting up WPA because its not just hackers or neighbors stealing your wifi connection even the very bad can use it for their bad deeds and you are innocent but can still end up in trouble like the American national.

-Abhiz