[SOLVED] Firewall to wireless network

[Hacked4Life]

Hello there,

My devices are on an insecure wireless network where I have no access to the router.

Is it possible to buy a hardware firewall and connect through this to the network?

What should I buy and how do I set it up?

BR

 

[bill001g]

The firewall in your pc should be good enough for most people. Make sure it is set to "public" network. This may make some game programs not function correctly, you will have to put exception in for those. Most work fine.

If you are worried that someone can intercept the traffic that is not as much concern as it was years ago. Traffic can be intercepted any place in the path, the wifi is just the first part. Almost all web sites use HTTPS so all data is encrypted. Just be extra careful you see a secure connection when you are using anything you care about. You can use a VPN if you really want to hide your traffic. It would be mostly to hide what ip addresses you are accessing. With https they can't actually see what you are doing.

 

[Hacked4Life]

Thank you for the reply.

I would prefer to have a hardware firewall setup.

So if anyone have a good selection and maybe some guides on the setup, it would be much appreciated.

Thx!

 

[bill001g]

First what exact feature do you want from a firewall.

Your largest issue is you now must somehow get the hardware device to receive wifi as it wan connection. It is highly unlikely you are going to find a firewall that can do this. Even routers are pretty rare that can have the input be wifi. You are likely going to have to use some form of wireless bridge type of device to hook to the firewall. You might look at some of the repeater/extender devices. It needs to be able to run in client bridge mode. Some have the ability to run in router mode. After that you can hook it to the firewall. You are going to need another wifi source on the LAN side of the firewall if you wan to connect your end device via wifi. Depending on the firewall you may need to hook a AP to it. Most actual firewalls only have ethernet ports.

BUT we are back to what feature do you need in a firewall. There are huge difference in firewalls depending on what feature you need.

If you think it is some magic box that can protect your machines from attack from the outside it is not worth the money. Just find a repeater/extender device that can run in router mode. The NAT function by itself prevents any traffic from accessing your machines.

You see all kinds of stuff on firewalls blah blah blah "deep packet inspection" blah blah. Because of the HTTPS that prevents the bad guys from seeing your traffic a firewall can no longer look inside the packets. Almost all these feature that requires packet inspection are not valid. So a firewall can no longer protect you against data attacks that are inside the encrypted connection. You must depend on the end machine to detect malware and virus itself.

If you can specify what feature you need in a firewall many people can give you a recommendation.

 

[Hacked4Life]

I'm no tech-savy to be honest - I have no clue what special functions I need to have in this firewall.

I have an extender currently in my home, wired to the main router with a regular ethernet cable.

My issue is there's some kinda hack in my MacBook. Deleting partitions and formatting the hard drive (even installing MacOS from USB device) does not remove it (I'm not kidding).

So need some firewall up, so I can block them from accessing it.

 

[bill001g]

Firewall won't fix that really. If you go to some site and run something it will pass right though the firewall. Again the firewall can not see what you are doing the traffic is encrypted.

Mac is actually more secure than most pc software and if you have reinstalled it is unlikely there is something on it.

If you have a router already then nobody from outside your house can access any machine inside. Unless you have DMZ or port forwarding setup all traffic is dropped from any machine on the internet that your machine did not first contact.

 

[Hacked4Life]

Thing is, I have no access to the router.

I know MacOS is supposed to be SUPER safe and all.

But the hack is still there after formatting the HD. Tried numerous times. They are able to activate drop down menu's, change video's playing, change system volume up and down, etc, etc.

I have sit in front of a computer most my life and I'm not paranoid or delusional in any way - the things happening, are impossible without intelligent control.

Guess, I have to throw it out and buy a new one (cause I prolly let them in the system and plant it, at sometime).

 

[bill001g]

You do not need access to the router the NAT protection is default. You actually have to go to quite a bit of effort to allow traffic in. People are here all the time because they can't get traffic to go to their minecraft server. So all traffic before the router on the internet can not get in.

If you are worried about the traffic between the router and your PC then you go back to the previous post where you need another router or repeater extender that can run as a router. Now you control the device your PC connects to and it prevents any traffic on the wifi from getting in with the second level of NAT. It is just cheaper than a firewall and sometime simpler to buy. Again if you want a actual firewall you need a wireless bridge to connect to the wifi, the firewall, a wireless AP to connect to the end device. The problem is all the wifi and firewall are hard to find that have wifi.

 

[Hacked4Life]

Alright. Thx for the advice.

I'll try to setup the second router, so I can get a second layer of protection - and hopefully block the connection they have with my MacBook.

Much appreciated!

 

[Hacked4Life]

If you have any specific routers in mind, that would match my requirements, at an affordable price. I would love a list to choose from.

 

[bill001g]

What you want is very rare actually. There are a handful of routers that can use the wifi as the WAN. I do not know those models. I know most people that do this use third party firmware like dd-wrt.

I would research extender/repeaters looking for one that can run in router mode. It would be nice if they used a consistent name. I forgot which one but I think they called the router mode universal repeater mode.

If you can not find it you can use any repeater that run simple client-bridge mode. You then hook that to any inexpensive router wan port. The router runs like any other it just treats the wifi connection coming in via the repeater as the ISP.