In previous posts we have seen how to have greater control of our home network and prevent our Wi-Fi from being stolen by creating whitelists and blacklists. Today we are going to go one step further by showing how we can hide the name of our wifi so that no one can see it in the typical search for available networks. A good way to go unnoticed and that our neighbors do not even consider the fact of hacking our password, since from the outset they will not even be able to know that there is a Wi-Fi at their fingertips unless they have previously connected or do a more thorough analysis .
For this we are going to carry out a fairly simple management that goes through accessing the configuration of our router and hide the SSID of our wireless network. Be careful, this does not mean that our Wi-Fi is totally undetectable, but it will be much more difficult to locate. There are programs that scan and detect this type of hidden network, such as NetSurveyor, but for typical novice users who try to connect to our Wi-Fi "with that trick that his cousin taught him" this may be more than enough.
Be careful and strengthen the security of your network
I insist. Hiding the SSID will not prevent us from stealing our Wi-Fi password and connecting to our network. As we mentioned, there are methods to detect this type of signals and hack them. To avoid this, it is best to filter by MAC creating white / black lists as we commented at the beginning of the post, use an encryption as secure as possible and above all creating a secure password with a length of at least 12 characters alternating uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols.
As a reader indicates in the comments area of this same post, we can also assign fixed IPs to our devices, deactivate the DHCP server and even create a guest network if necessary. Unfortunately, even these methods cannot save us from an attacker who tries to infiltrate using MAC spoofing (a technique known as Spoofing). Once this point is clarified, let's see how we can hide the name or SSID of a Wi-Fi network.
How to hide the name or SSID of our wifi network
If we want our wifi to stop showing in the list of available networks when a user activates the wireless receiver of their device, we will have to enter the router configuration settings. It is usually accessed by loading the URL //192.168.0.1 or //192.168.1.1 in the browser. Note: If you are using your mobile and you have problems, take a look at the post «How to access a router from Android«.
Once inside we go to the wireless network settings. The panel and menus usually vary depending on our router model, although in general they are all quite similar. You know what they say, "seen one, seen all."
Once inside the Wi-Fi signal settings, usually next to the network name and the access password, we activate the box "Hide SSID" (Hide SSID if our interface is in English) and save the changes. Achieved!
How to connect to a Wi-Fi network with hidden SSID
The next question that arises after carrying out this action is more than obvious. How do we connect to Wi-Fi now if it does not appear in the list of available networks? The first thing to clarify is that those devices that were already connected previously will automatically continue to connect to the network.
For the rest, we will have to make the connection manually.
Windows
In the case of Windows 10, we will go to the System Configuration panel (from start, by clicking on the gear icon) and we will enter "Network and Internet”. In the left panel, click on "Wifi"And select"Manage known networks”.
From this new menu, we click on "Add a new network”. Here a window will open where we will have to enter by hand the name of the Wi-Fi network, the type of security and the access password. If you do not know what type of security is used, you can check it by entering the router and checking the wireless network settings. To give us an idea, in most modern home routers the default security used is AES WPA2-Personal.
Android
If we connect from an Android mobile device the process is very similar. We open the menu of "Settings”And we navigate to“Networks and internet -> Wi-Fi -> Add network”. This will take us to a screen in which we will have to manually add the name or SSID of the network, the type of security and the access code.
How to hide or show the Wi-Fi SSID using commands
To finish, let's take a look at how to hide or show the SSID of a Wi-Fi network through MS-DOS commands on a Windows computer. With this, what we will achieve is that the team in which we are working not able to detect a specific Wi-Fi network.
This is an action that can come in handy if we work in an office and we do not want a specific PC to be able to connect to the wireless network, or to block access to Wi-Fi to certain devices that we may have at home.
The process is very simple: we open Cortana, type the command "CMD" (without quotes) and run the command prompt program as administrator. Once we have the terminal open we execute the following command:
netsh wlan add filter permission = block ssid = »wifi name» networktype = infrastructure
If everything went well, we will see a message indicating that the filter has been added to the system. On the other hand, if we want the computer to detect one of these "silenced" Wi-Fi networks again, we can reverse the situation with this other command:
netsh wlan delete filter permission = block ssid = »wifi name» networktype = infrastructure
As you can see, it is a very easy method to execute that can be great for controlling which networks certain wireless devices are connected to individually.
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