Minimum security. You are welcome.

I’ve been thinking too much about the issue this small. There are too many ways to do it, and I want it off my TODO list. So I chose the simpliest solution ever.

I am talking about the security of my home WiFi access point. It was wide open until now. And I am not going to spend a lot of time on locking it down. I am not going to use any encryption – not WEP, not WPA, nothing. It’s just not worth it. All my sensitive communications are already encrypted anyway (HTTPS and SSH). And I don’t care a bit beyond that.

For the bad guys among my neighbors, who want to do harm, I added one small barrier. I have switched off network address translation (NAT) on my home server, except for my notebook. So, either spoof your IP address and do you bad stuff, or be good and use my proxy server for fast Internet access.

Out of sight, out of mind. I’ll come back to it only if I’ll ever have a problem with my current setup. Life is too precious to spend it thinking about idiots.

8 thoughts on “Minimum security. You are welcome.”


  1. Why, just limiting allowed MAC addresses on your wiriless router to the one of your laptop and whatever else you want to connect would do a better job I think.


  2. Oh, and also, how could I forgot my favourite thing… I remember one of my friends trying to set up WEP enryption for wireless connection under fedora core 4 – no success, too much searching and hacking. While under Windows it’s a matter of several clicks.


  3. Alexey,

    Why, just limiting allowed MAC addresses on your wiriless router to the one of your laptop and whatever else you want to connect would do a better job I think.

    I have guests frequently. Usually they come with beer. I don’t want to edit my firewall rules before and after beer. :)

    Oh, and also, how could I forgot my favourite thing…

    Trolling? I warned you already. Your next troll comment will be deleted. If you absolutely have to troll, please take it either to linux.org.ru, where you can do so in Russian, or to Slashdot, where English is the language of choice.

    I remember one of my friends trying to set up WEP enryption for wireless connection under fedora core 4 – no success, too much searching and hacking. While under Windows it’s a matter of several clicks.

    I remember once my mother tried to copy and paste with the mouse. In Windows it takes 4 extra clicks! Four! Oh, my! She got so tired! In Linux it is so much easier…

    Seriously Alexei – I am not forcing you into using Linux. If it doesn’t work for you or if you don’t like it – don’t use it. It works great for me and that’s why I choose to use it… Please stop bothering me with the attitude.


  4. Wow, I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, it was all out of fun. I thought it was suitable for a personal blog comment to have some fun in it. Will not hear it from me here, I promise!


  5. Alexey,

    I am sorry if I hurt your feelings

    Don’t worry, you didn’t. ;)

    I thought it was suitable for a personal blog comment to have some fun in it.

    The fun is suitable. I just failed to see any fun in the commends like:

    I remember one of my friends trying to set up WEP enryption for wireless connection under fedora core 4 – no success, too much searching and hacking. While under Windows it’s a matter of several clicks.

    That’s not informative, funny, or very insightful…

  6. I have guests frequently. Usually they come with beer. I don’t want to edit my firewall rules before and after beer. :)

    So what is your current configuration? No NAT and specific address of proxy server? But then your friends still need to configure their proxy settings to access internet when they come with beer to you and configure them back the next morning having a hangover. Am I missing something?

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