RE: Wireless Security

["Murda Mcloud" <murdamcloud () bigpond com>]

How about asking the provider of the free access to look at setting up WPA?
<puts on tinfoil hat>
Even then, how do you know you can trust the people running it? What if
they've set it up so that they can sniff the traffic as it becomes 'wired'?

I think it might be difficult to prevent any sniffing of your traffic to the
wireless router- unless you setup a vpn to your office perhaps.

I mean, from a security standpoint I'd assume that the router is compromised
from day one and sending anything in the clear is not a good idea. 

Having a firewall between you and the network would be a good idea-not sure
if kaspersky has this built in or not. I'd err on the side of caution and be
ultra paranoid in a setup like that. Start with disallow anything
incoming/outgoing and then add outgoing ports etc as you need them. eg 80.
That's a start for preventing people snooping on your system/network but
won't solve the sniffing issue.

As a demo of what can be sniffed, why not setup kismet or similar and just
see what you can find yourself-then you'll get an idea of what can be
sniffed from your traffic.


-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com] On
Behalf Of Yousef Syed
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 3:37 AM
To: Security Basics
Subject: Wireless Security

I need some advice.
I'm currently staying in an apartment complex that provides free
wireless Internet access.
The access has zero crypto - not even WEP.

What can I do on my own Laptops (Mac OS X and Windows XP Pro) to make
my browsing/internet usage more secure? I also want to ensure that no
one else on the network is entering my systems.

The Windows Laptop already has Kaspersky Internet Security and various
spyware/adware checkers etc

Thanks,
ys

-- 
Yousef Syed
CISSP

http://www.linkedin.com/in/musashi