sidejacking

[lazygood4nothinbum]

just scoped this out on Yahoo! news about new hijacking equipment enabling cyberstalkers to listen into wifi connections on public networks like those at coffee shops and hotels. not good for the vagabond banking overseas on their personal computers or any exhibitionist who enjoys drinking coffee in public while they email.

the report says an encryption program which effectively sets up a vpn (virtual private network) called hot spots shield is available from AnchorFree

haven't checked it out yet but certainly will before i check into my next hotel stay.

edit: not such a good review from cnet

This freeware program promises to encrypt all your Internet connections, but since most public Wi-Fi access points in the U.S. are open, it's a bit hard to gauge Hotspot Shield's effectiveness. However, the connection itself is a bit wonky....Overall, we can't give Hotspot Shield a strong recommendation, but as a last resort it might be worth trying out.

anyone have experience with a better program for creating a vpn to protect against sidejacking?

 

[chinaco]

Other threats are Evil Twin and Man in the Middle.

 

[Nords]

anyone have experience with a better program for creating a vpn to protect against sidejacking?

As Chinaco has pointed out, it's a computing arms race and you're perpetually one step behind the Forces of Evil.

If it's necessary to log into a financial account, it's probably better to do it from an Internet café with a flash drive than from Starbucks.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

thanx, will look into flash drives. i'm not tech-hip at all. finally just bought my first digital camera. but i'll figure this out.

 

[samclem]

LG4NB,

I travel a bit, about 70% of the hotels I visit use wired network connections, the remainder are wireless. Of course, in the airports, etc its only wireless.

Getting a truly secure wireless connection is going to be a PITA. You might want to just check and see if the hotels you are visiting are wired, and do your more sensitive work there. I don't even log into my email over a public wireless connection (ever notice that if you've forgotten your user info for an account, they'll send it to your email address? If somebody has your email address and password, I'll bet they could get a LOT of your passwords that way.)