Protect your PC. Make it Invisible.

The links on this page (other than those in this first paragraph) are to external sources of information. As the page grows, if you want to search for a keyword or phrase, just press the Ctrl and F keys together and type the keyword or phrase into the dialogue edit box and then click on the Find Next button. The links below will only scroll this page to the relevant link on this page.

• Internet IP Address security
• Process security
• Wireless security

Internet IP Address security has to do with making your current internet address invisible to the rest of the world wide web. There are both hardware and software solutions to achieve this depending on how you connect to the Internet.

If you connect via an ADSL router (either with or without an integral firewall), you need to ensure that the firmware is up-to-date. You can do this by downloading the latest firmware from the manufacturer's web site. If your connection is effectively by dial up using the PC hardware, you need to ensure you have a proven software firewall (don't rely on the free Windows firewall). What you are looking to achieve is handling the various Internet protocols on their specific ports (TCP and UDP) so that when you initiate communication, the connection handles these in the normal way, and when someone or something else attempts communication, your hardware and/or software remains silent. In effect you are saying there is nobody here. Two sites that test your connection free-of-charge are AuditMyPC and Shields Up. Some commentators seem to have an axe to grind with the author, but the site itself is OK and can be accessed at the following link:


If you get through all the tests, your Internet address is going to be better protected than if some of the tests fail.

Process security has to do with ensuring that the processes running on your PC are valid and from a trusted source. There are a number of useful web sites that can give you information about these processes. These sites are given below:


Wireless security has to do with securing your wireless connection. There are several steps:


There are commentators who recommend that you prevent your Access Point from broadcasting its name. If you do this then your wireless card will switch over from passive to active mode telling the world that it wants a particular Access Point. So you are no better off. The key here is to choose an innocuous name for your Access Point. Don't use anything that can be used to identify you. Default names are probably not too bad because any serious hacker can tell what your Access Point is by its traffic.

Do use an encryption key with a suitable encryption method (avoid WEP, its still available, principally for 802.11b wireless cards and can be cracked faster than you can read this page). The point to make is that the encryption is only as good as the key you use. It should be at least 20 characters long (and longer is better). Don't think of the key as a word, its actually a passphrase. Use something you can remember. Nursery rhymes are a good starting point:


First, capitalize the first letter of each word and then remove the blanks. Next, change various words to make the phrase more nonsensical, but that you can still remember. So, in this case, Jill becomes Fred, Up becomes Xp (as in Windows XP), Hill becomes Hole, Pail becomes Cup, Water becomes the German word Wasser:


Then change some characters to numerics:


So Jack becomes J1ck and Fred becomes Fr5d (the letter replaced with its numeric match). Will this be totally secure? Well, no, but its better than using your name or your birthday. You get the idea. The more this phrase means less to anyone else than to you the harder it is to crack by brute force, dictionary searches or knowing some information about you. However, the key is to make a phrase you can remember and then a sequence of changes to the original phrase that mean something to you. If you stopped the changes at capitalizing the first word letter, removing the blanks and changing Jack and Fred the phrase is weaker than it would be but you will probably remember it better.

Limit who can get through your Access Point. Most wireless hardware has a client list which you can modify to only accept communication from specified physical (or MAC) addresses. These are the addresses which are unique to each wireless card. You will find the MAC address (also called the Physical address) when you use Start > run and open a CMD window. Type in ipconfig /all and you will see the physical address. It has 6 two character strings separated by - characters. Use these complete strings in your Access Point connection control web page.

Finally, do change your Access Point login password from the default value using the passphrase technique above. Choose a starting phrase which if different from the encryption key. It is probably best if you make up three phrases with changes and then memorize them so you can use them as necessary. If you need to write them down, put the paper into an envelope and seal it, then lock this away safely. You need to think of a word or short phrase to write on the envelope to jog your memory. Try not to use Passwords. In the above example, Jack and Jill might be appropriate.

Finally, you might consider replacing a wireless connection with a powerline connection (for example Devolo). Why? Because an encrypted powerline connection is less likely to be intercepted by a third party. See this link for details of the use of airborne drones within the USA.