Last year I blogged about the dangers of BT Home Hub users using WEP for “Wi-Fi Security”, pointing out that WEP is generally considered insecure and that WPA or WPA2 should be used instead. Then I set up my Dad’s Home Hub for him (just as an ADSL router/modem at this time… possibly with some of the other features later) and this is what I found:
- The Home Hub is an elegant piece of hardware and BT have made cabling straightforward with colour-coded cables.
- Following the instructions (which is what I did) involved installing a lot of software on the PC… just to connect to a router. I imagine that most of it can be disregarded (Customised browsers, BT Yahoo! sidebar etc.).
- The setup failed to recognise that there was already an ADSL modem connection and that I was replacing that with a LAN-based connection (eventually I found a setting deep on the BT Broadband Help system to change that, after which uPnP jumped into life and the router was located).
- The supplied password for BT Yahoo! Broadband didn’t work, resetting it required answering a security question that had never been set (chicken… egg…) and calling for support involved speaking to a well-intentioned but not very efficient call centre operative somewhere on the Indian subcontinent (who apologised for the quality of the phone line… ironic given that this service was on behalf of one of the World’s largest telecommunications providers)
Returning last week to finish the job, I found that BT have been updating the router firmware automatically for him and now he has options for WPA/WPA2 (which I duly configured). I also found a great link for information on the home hub (a rebadged Thomson device) – the The Frequencycast Home Hub FAQ – which told me useful things like to access the configuration via http://bthomehub.home/ and that the authentication prompt for administrator access does not requires the BT Broadband username and password but the username admin and password of admin (or the serial number of the device) until it is reset to something more memorable. If you need to know something about the BT Home Hub, the chances are it’s in this FAQ. Also worth a look (particularly if you have a Mac that’s not playing nicely with WPA-TKIP – although my OS X 10.5.5 MacBook seemed to be fine with Home Hub software 6.2.6.E) is the BT Home Hub page on hublog – and there is also a command line interface reference for the Home Hub.
Just a security note here about WPA: as reported in pcworld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/153396/) the WPA wifi security standard was partially cracked by two security researchers recently. However, WPA/WPA2 still provide a pretty good security solution for wifi, at least to defend against script-kiddies
Fair comment; however in a home situation it’s hard enough to grab enough data to crack even WEP – and this new attack on TKIP also requires a large amount of data. A business environment with many clients greatly increases the risk of a successful breach (more data to sniff and then use for a brute force attack).
Of course, where supported by the hardware then the latest standard (i.e. WPA2) should be used and the BT Home Hub supports WPA2 – just check that your client devices do too.