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Thursday, February 23, 2012

[HowTo] Know if someone is stealing your WiFi

We had written about configuring WiFi properly in your home. Now, we will cover the security aspect of a WiFi connection. Most of the people do secure their WiFi with WPA-PSK keys. These keys are hard to break , Again it is always good to know few things which we will be covering in this tutorial.
How to know, If some one is stealing your WiFi?
The key here is to understand the router LOGs These log files are updated automatically by the router firmware , when someone connects your network, does a admin login etc.
First, open your router admin page . Most of the admin pages can be accessed by writinghttp://192.168.1.1 in any browser. Make sure that your modem is connected to your PC via LAN or WiFi.
Few modems have address http://192.168.0.1.
Enter username as admin and password as admin. If the login fails, then try with the blank password.
Once you are able to open the router configuration page, open the connected devices link. This link usually appears in the front page itself.
Navigate to the attached devices, and have a close look into the list. Example :
The attached devices must be your computers, devices that are connected to network. Keep a count and then cross verify.
How To know the failed connection attempts?
Again, in the router configuration page , you can find direct link to open the log.
In the log file, if there is something like “connection rejected“, it means that , the device with the listed MAC address , is trying to connect to your WiFi .
What to do next?
Well, if someone is already connected to your WiFi network, first thing you need to do is to change your WiFi password. And wrong password attempts does not cause any trouble.

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