Wireless Security specific question - clarification needed.

I recently got a new mobile phone with a WiFi facility so decided to see how well it worked with my linksys wag200g router - which mostly has it's wireless side/mode disabled as I use cabling.
However after establishing that whilst both router and phone supported WPA2 but not with each other, I opted for WPA TKIP and my router wireless security set to "Permitted Only" MAC's. So just the mobile phone Mac was allowed.

Anyway, I decided as I had tested enough and I needed some sleep to disable the wireless side of the router and call it a day. Unfortunately I accessed the wrong Linksys tab and disabled wireless security! so for 24hours (until I realised) i had an open wifi connection albeit with the "Permitted Access" MAC still enabled.

My concerns are if anyone accessed my network/internet connection during that time. But after reading here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_security under the following heading Identity theft (MAC spoofing) am I right to be reassured that no other access could of taken place as my mobile phone was NOT switched on, therefore in turn not giving away it's allowed MAC over the air?

MAC filtering is only effective for small residential(SOHO)networks, since it only provides protection when the wireless device is "off the air". Any 802.11 device "on the air" freely transmits it unencrypted MAC address in its 802.11 headers, and it requires no special equipment or software to detect it.

Thanks Guys.

Edited by Vorlon (Fri 12-Mar-10 14:44:20)

Anything is possible but it is unlikely. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Probably it is too late now, if someone did hacking into your "Open" Modem/Router, but you should be able to check it through your Router's Wireless Log, can you???

No Unfortunately the log is just too short.

I'll just have to hope that although my router was set to an "Open" wireless connection, that the extra level of security I normally use that was in force ie MAC permitted access would have prevented any access.
The Device (mobile phone) that had permitted access was switched off too, so there should have been no traffic that could have been sniffed to find that specific mac address.

I've learnt since that only a brute force attack on finding the mac figure I've permitted would be the only way my network could have been connected to. I would assume though anyone going to that level would equally be a threat to a wpa/wpa2 secured network, especially those nerworks that have weak passphrases.