question about all the wifi networks in my area

[Comp_Pro]

've yet to encounter a modern router that doesn't support WPA, it's a 2 second change and with a strong key it's exponentially more secure than WEP.

Some people are just really lazy. I managed to crack my friends wep password in around 5 minutes (Story details are on page 1 of this thread somewhere). I'm no hacker or anything but it was actually really easy to do it. First you scan for networks with aircrack-ng, when you find your network you target it using its channel and mac address, then start injecting packets and eventually you will get enough data to crack it. It doesn't take very long, require much knowledge OR much cpu power.

I did it on my netbook which is only 1.6ghz. Seriously if anyone here has a WEP password you should REALLY consider to change it to a WPA.

 

[Jesusfrk611]

On the deal of why people don't change from WEP. Some people may not know which is more secure, so they just pick one. Until just now I never really looked into which was more secure. I'm pretty sure mine is WPA, but I haven't looked at my router settings in awhile, and I forgot my username and password for it.

 

[Bucky24]

Anyone could EASILY crack your password in less then 5 minutes (It's a wep key, very unsecure). Then they can spoof their mac address to your mac address and start using your internet.

Your setup might sound secure to you but there are some smart people out there

Spoofing a MAC address only is really feasible if you know a MAC address thats on the whitelist already. If you want to brute-force it... I imagine that would take some time.

Of course since MAC addresses are given out in blocks to device manufactures you could narrow down a brute-force search a bit. Ie someone allowed on the network has an iphone, so you already know the first 4-6 digits of a whitelisted MAC address, which leaves 6-8 others... around 16^6 possibilities at the best case.
It can be done, of course, but someone would have to be very dedicated.

-Bucky24