Re: Are hidden shares safe from discovery

From: Kerry Brown (kerry_at_kdbNOSPAMsys-tems.c*a*m)
Date: 05/31/05 

Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 10:41:52 -0700

"d28" <kevindu28@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1117556265.633489.42770@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Which programs? That's what I'm trying to get at. And if as you said,
> someone were to remotely connect to my WLAN as an administator, they
> are only administrator on thier machine, right? I don't have the remote
> desktop service running or anything like that. I have only XP Home
> machines making passwords irrelevant in file sharing. My only method to
> somewhat to protect the shared folders is through the hidden share
> (share$) method.
>

Someone trying to hack your LAN will probably not be using Windows XP. The
shares are only hidden from Windows clients. If they can access the LAN they
can access the shares if they have a password. If you have file sharing
enabled there are programs to use a brute force method to crack your
password. I am not going to post a tutorial on how to hack into a computer.
Just be assured that it can be done if they have access to your LAN. Using
strong passwords makes this harder. You can use NTFS permissions with XP
Home.

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xpperm/xpPerm1.htm

This will add another layer of protection. XP Home was not designed to be
secure on a network. You can make it somewhat secure. That is the best it
does.

Possibly your router can do MAC filtering. If you set that up it would be
much harder for someone to acquire access to the LAN.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=wireless+router+MAC+filtering&btnG=Search&meta=

To be 100% secure would require XP Pro, an offline certificate server with
IPSEC, a secure DHCP server or static IP's, a secure DNS server, and a
wireless router with a very sophisticated firewall. Even then you would have
to monitor for intrusions. Security is a very complex subject. Wireless
networking just adds to the problem. If you take reasonable precautions and
use WPA encryption and NTFS permissions with wireless networking I would be
more worried about malware from the internet than someone hacking your
wireless network. If your data is really that sensitive you need outside
help and a lot of money.

Kerry

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