How to Prepare Wi-Fi Networks for Smart Devices

Before you plug in and fire up those smart light bulbs, appliances or television you need to prepare your Wi-Fi network to ensure your speeds and security are not affected by the presence of this new equipment.

It is estimated by research firm IHS that the IoT market will grow from an installed base of 15.4 billion devices in 2015 to 30.7 billion devices in 2020 and 75.4 billion in 2025. Our washing machines, coffee pots, thermostats, lights, probably even the toilet and the kitchen sink will all be hooked up to our home Wi-Fi networks. While this will likely lead to more convenience when it comes to home management and maintenance it will also create bottlenecks on home networks slowing down your smart phone, tablet and laptops.

Before you plug in and fire up those smart light bulbs, appliances or television you need to prepare your Wi-Fi network to ensure your speeds and security are not affected by the presence of this new equipment. Most people plug in their Wi-Fi router and never worry about it again, unless they are calling their internet provider to complain about an outage or slow connection. It might not be your provider though, your type of router, where it is placed, the bandwidth of the router and the number of devices you have connecting to it at home could be to blame for your Wi-Fi headaches.

1. Location, location, location. Router location plays a major role in the range and efficiency of a Wi-Fi network. Placing a router in a cabinet or an out of the way room might make your home look less cluttered but this also blocks the signal with doors and walls, plus everything inside your walls, from reaching the areas of your home where you are trying to use your devices. Use a Wi-Fi analytics app to check your Wi-Fi signal strength at each of the locations that you plan to put smart home devices. Be sure that the signal strength is at least 60% at each of those locations. Also check the signal strength where you normally sit to use your laptop, tablet and phone.

2. Flex Wi-Fi muscle. If you have a smaller home and need more coverage look for a high-power router that has more internal and external antennas than your current router model. If you have a larger home, consider using range extenders or a whole home Wi-Fi system.

3. Read the label. When shopping for a new router some of the key terms to look for include AC1900 as a minimum speed and MU-MIMO Technology. While your connection speeds will ultimately be determined by the level of speed you pay for through your internet service provider if you do not have a router equipped to handle the fastest speeds available today you will always experience a slower connection. MU-MIMO is desirable in homes with multiple devices and internet users. Instead of creating a queue of connection requests that are handled in order like a traditional router would do, MU-MIMO routers serve data to more devices at once without limiting speeds. This is critical in homes with smart devices as the total count of devices can add up quickly.

4. Make it ironclad. We all know that hackers have a variety of ways to trick us into giving them access to our digital accounts and methods of stealing account information and passwords from companies we do business with; however, that doesn’t mean we should just give up and let them into our networks freely. You need to make sure your network is secure as possible. If you are deciding between two routers and one offers added layers of security with virus protection and malware detection, for example, pick the one that is focused on security. Also, be sure to set up complex, hard to crack passwords. Never leave your Wi-Fi open without a password. Even guest networks should require one for access. Also, any time you have an issue with your email being hacked or one of your online accounts is breached, change your Wi-Fi password along with all your other accounts, just to be safe.

To recap;

1. Position your router in an optimal location, as central as possible.
2. Test your Wi-Fi signal strength with a signal strength tool, be sure to check all locations where smart devices will live.
3. If weak spots are found, try a High-Power Router or a Range Extender. If you want a seamless network, try a Whole Home Wi-Fi System.
4. Use a router that supports at least AC1900 speeds and MU-MIMO technology.
5. Keep your network secure with hard-to-crack passwords and built-in protection from other web threats like Malware.

via HomeToys

Update your iPhone to avoid being hacked over Wi-Fi

It’s only been five days since Apple’s last security update for iOS, when dozens of serious security vulnerabilities were patched.

As we mentioned last week, the recent iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.12.4 updates included numerous fixes dealing with “arbitrary code execution with kernel privileges”.

Any exploit that lets an external attacker tell the operating system kernel itself what to is a serious concern that ought to be patched as soon as possible – hesitation is not an option.

After all, it’s the kernel that’s responsible for managing security in the rest of the system.

Sophos Home

Free home computer security software for all the family

Learn More

Take this analogy with pinch of salt, but an exploit that gives a remote attacker regular user access is like planting a spy in the Naval corps with a Lieutenant’s rank.

If you can grab local administrator access, that’s like boosting yourself straight to Captain or Commodore; but if you can own the kernel (this is not a pun), you’ve landed among the senior Admiral staff, right at the top of the command structure.

So make sure you don’t miss the latest we-didn’t-quite-get-this-one-out-last-time update to iOS 10.3.1:

iOS 10.3.1

Released April 3, 2017

Wi-Fi

Available for: iPhone 5 and later, 
               iPad 4th generation and later, 
               iPod touch 6th generation and later

Impact:        An attacker within range may be able to 
               execute arbitrary code on the Wi-Fi chip

Description:   A stack buffer overflow was addressed 
               through improved input validation.

CVE-2017-6975: Gal Beniamini of Google Project Zero

This is rather different from the usual sort of attack – the main CPU, operating system and installed apps are left well alone.

Most network attacks rely on security holes at a much higher level, in software components such as databases, web servers, email clients, browsers and browser plugins.

So, attacking the Wi-Fi network card itself might seem like small beer.

After all, the attacks that won hundreds of thousands of dollars at the recent Pwn2Own competition went after the heart of the operating system itself, to give the intruders what you might call an “access all areas” pass.

Nevertheless, the CPU of an externally-facing device like a Wi-Fi card is a cunning place to mount an attack.

It’s a bit like being just outside the castle walls, on what most security-minded insiders would consider the wrong side of the moat and drawbridge.

But with a bit of cunning you may be able to position yourself where you can eavesdrop on every message coming in and out of the castle…

…all the while being ignored along with the many unimportant-looking peasants and hangers-on who’ll never have the privilege of entering the castle itself.

Better yet, once you’ve eavesdropped on what you wanted to hear, you’re already on the outside, so you don’t have to run the gauntlet of the guards to get back out to a place where you can pass your message on.

What to do?

As far as we know, this isn’t a zero-day because it was responsibly disclosed and patched before anyone else found out about it.

Cybercrooks have a vague idea of where to start looking now the bug that has been described, but there’s a huge gap between knowing that an exploitable bug exists and rediscovering it independently.

We applied the update as soon as Apple’s notification email arrived (the download was under 30MB), and we’re happy to assume that we’ve therefore beaten even the most enthusiatic crooks to the punch this time.

You can accelerate your own patch by manually visiting Settings | General | Software Update to force an upgrade, rather than waiting for your turn in Apple’s autoupdate queue.

via nakedsecurity