Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi is everywhere, but not all Wi-Fi is created equally secure. This page will deal with Wi-Fi in 3 places:
- At The Ohio State University
- At home
- In public places (restaurants, public libraries, car dealerships, etc.).
Be sure to keep reading to learn the basics of Wi-Fi encryption and why strong passwords are so imporant.
Using Wi-Fi at Ohio State
Ohio State provides wireless network services for Ohio State students, faculty, staff and guests.
- Osuwireless: Secure Wi-Fi to be used by students, faculty, and staff
- WiFi@OSU: open Wi-Fi network for guests and visitors
- eduroam: Secure Wi-Fi network that can be used by students and staff at Ohio State when they travel to other participating universities
It is important to understand how to set up Wi-Fi for use at home, at school, and in public places. A safe configuration is one where your data will remain private and protected when transmitted wirelessly. Ohio State provides a safe configuration for osuwireless that can be used by all students, faculty and staff.
Ohio State users should use the encrypted Wi-Fi, osuwireless, if possible. This network requires users to sign in with their university username and password.
Using Public Wi-Fi
At your favorite coffee shop (where he/she who controls the pumpkin spice controls the universe), you begin to settle into your hot beverage and homework. Without even thinking, you connect to the shop’s free, open Wi-Fi and begin to study. Suddenly, you remember that you have to pay your utility bill (not a big deal, since these days we can pay for everything online). You mosey over to the bank’s webpage and sign in to check your account’s funds. Then you finally post the payment by entering your debit card into the utility company’s payment process page.
You've just made yourself vunerable to an attacker who can now access your banking details, and you suddenly no longer have funds for that utility bill. How “free” is that Wi-Fi now? protections to their users (seriously, do you ever read those disclaimers?)..
Public Wi-Fi is susceptible to Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks. This is where an attacker can sit between you and the Wi-Fi access point, intercepting all the data that is sent and received. These malicious actors can “sniff” out passwords, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc.
In a public space, we don’t recommend users connecting to public Wi-Fi access points unless they are trusted and managed appropriately (such as osuwireless, which is secure and only available to the university community). Instead, please consider using something like a personal cellphone or cellular hotspot. This ensures that your data is protected through your carrier and that there are no third parties intercepting your data. If you have no choice but to use public Wi-Fi, we recommend these mitigating actions when using public Wi-Fi:
- Always choose secured public Wi-Fi over unsecured.
- Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to protect your privacy
- Don’t log into password protected sites (such as banking, social media, school, etc.)
- Don’t shop online
- Turn off automatic connectivity on your device
But the bottom line is in a public space, we don’t recommend users connecting to public Wi-Fi access points unless they are trusted and managed appropriately
Using remote.
- Disable Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS).
- Use the best/latest encryption available.
- Keep the router’s firmware updated (turn auto-updates if available).
Wi-Fi Encryption: Simplified
Wi-Fi encryption is what keeps your data safe. Encryption, through algorithms and complicated mathematics, is the method to code plaintext data into unintelligible gibberish (known as cipher text) that is:
- Reversible by only the intended recipient and
- Completely secure (ideally); almost certainly more secure than unencrypted data.
To encrypt literally means to “put into a tomb” (that is designed to prevent intrusion/looting unless your name is Indiana Jones).
Encryption keeps people from reading plaintext data and helps ensure that your data is not seen by unauthorized outsiders. Examples of plaintext data include:
- Passwords
- Credit Card numbers
- Tokens
- Pretty much anything you’d wish to protect
Cryptography can be a very complex subject. This example is a very simplified explanation of what cryptography does. Imagine writing a saucy letter to a love interest. You don’t want anybody else to know the content of the letter, so you devise a method to write a secret code in a way that the other person can undo and read intelligibly. This method is not shared with anybody else (think of this as your Wi-Fi Password). The purpose is to be able to communicate without allowing outsiders to decode and understand the details of the letter.
When using Wi-Fi, use the strongest encryption available. Currently, WPA3 is the strongest encryption available, but only on some late-model routers. On the rest, WPA2 + AES is acceptible, and we recommend using it. The rankings of encryptions based on strength are as follows:
- WPA3 (Strongest!)
- WPA2 + AES
- WPA2 + AES/TKIP (TKIP is used when AES cannot be used)
- WPA2 + TKIP (TKIP is used when AES cannot be used)
- WPA + TKIP
- WEP (WEP is little better than completely unsecured)
- None
Wi-Fi passwords are important, too! (Ohio State.