Scobleizer - Latest Comments in How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

personal vpn — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:00:41 -0000

I'am using vpn account from another personal vpn service called VPN Privacy (http://vpnprivacy.com) to protect myself when work at public wi-fi zones. It's more fast reliable then hotspotvpn for me.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

vic — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:33:26 -0000

Yah, the folks commenting about VPN being a secure way to safeguard your wifi connection are right. Site's like http://nationwidevpn.com might be helpful when you want to secure your own network.

T1 Buyer's Guide

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

jgeils — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:02:31 -0000

This free VPN client looks really compelling. Its based on OpenVPN and the server seems to have reasonable bandwidth. It would be helpful if someone more technical could review it.

http://www.anchorfree.com/h...

Jay

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Phil Ferris — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:31:10 -0000

The other advantage with hotspotvpn is that it can be used with a pda e.g. my Axim x51v

I would also recommend the security podcasts at http://www.grc.com/security....

Regards from Cornwall

Phil

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Bill — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 20:44:41 -0000

Cody..you have skills and what you're saying is correct, but many people don't have your technical prowess or desire/time to set that up. Or, if you were jsut responding to Brian from IBM..I agree. Brian, if you have the miltary believing that, I need to buy some IBM stock. :)

With a "VPN service" (where they've already setup the servers, bandwidth, ordering method, and support) anyone can protect their data and identity over any network (hotspot, office, hotel) as well as have secure IM and secure file-sharing. If you want it secured end to end, you just need to both be using the same VPN service and initiate a direct connection if your IM provider isn't peer to peer. On AIM, it's an option called direct connect.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Cody — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 18:35:50 -0000

I can secure IM with 256-bit AES encryption...using SSH Dynamic Port Fowarding. It's not that difficult. Plus, you can still use your favorite client, like Gaim.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Brian Benz — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:20:21 -0000

IM is, by nature, open. Basically, there are no foolproof tricks to make IM private, unless the product is designed for that from the ground up. But then it's not open to all, only authenticated users. IBM makes a product called sametime that does IM and more, securely - It's used by several branches of the military. We use that in house at IBM.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Security Monger — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 13:36:28 -0000

Hamachi is great for gamers and for connecting multiple computers in a WAN as if they were on the same LAN. Very neat stuff but it's not a good choice for wifi security. The two companies mentioned previously, http://www.witopia.net and http://www.hotspotvpn.com, specialize in this and are both good choices. witopia is a lot cheaper for their open vpn-based SSL vpn, which is the same technology hotspotvpn uses for their hsvpn 2, but hotspotvpn offers monthly plans while you have to pay for a year of service with witopia. hsvpn offers a PPTP solution too (which I personally wouldn't recommend as it's much weaker security)for a lower price though. witopia also offers a hosted radius solution for protecting your wlan with 802.1x/wpa-enterprise as does boxedwireless.com. wpa-enterprise is much stronger than other means of wifi security but mostly used by businesses. might be overkill for a home user unless you're quite serious(paranoid?) about security.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Scott Kingery — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:56:01 -0000

Might want to check out Hamachi. It's a program that allows you to arrange multiple computers into their own secure network just as if they were connected by a physical network cable.
http://www.hamachi.cc/
Versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

People interested in security may want to listen to Security Now! podcast
http://www.grc.com/security...

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Scott — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:48:28 -0000

LayZ:

"You seem flip flop between condescending and clueless."

As opposed to LayZ, who seems consistent at both!! :D

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Rhandir — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:15:41 -0000

Thanks Scoble,

Having someone with a lot of blog traffic post a how-do-we-do-this type question is helpful. There's lots of HOWTOs out there on securing wifi, and most of the good ones have steps like "setup an SSH sever" with the assumption that you'll already know how to do that. This kind of post tends to attract more user-level advice.

Oh, and all you haters? L33t dudes, if you think only the ubergeeks read scoble, you are wrong. Does everybody know that wifi isn't that secure? Yeah, but we don't all fully understand by how much.

Remember this: a good part of his reading audience is what used to be called "power users" back in the day. You know, people who figured out how do do stuff with command line DOS when their bosses were terrified of computers. People who hacked wacky excel macros to manipulate data because there were NO free-as-in-beer software environments with pretty highlighting.

Power users aren't dumb, they are just _not experts_. Why the *&%# should they be?

Reality check here:
Most users, even most power users don't have a good mental model of how security across a network works. Why?

1. Because of the craptastic OS that most of us use hides what really goes on.
2. Because the explanations commonly used are oversimplified and inaccurate.
3. Because the people who do know usually can't be bothered to explain in a human-readable way.
4. Because 60% of what we learn is secure this year is cracked the next.
5. Vendors.

Oh, you want me to talk about vendors? Heh. I mean, we've been sending plaintext email for 30 years, and when have you seen a webmail provider or a mail client that had pgp enabled by default? I'm not talking about hushmail, I'm asking what about _Yahoo_? What about Outlook Express? Vendors suck at this stuff. Not because they don't have the engineering chops, but because they are...

...er... I don't know why, actually. Ethically challenged?
Okay, here's a moral challenge, all you Web 2.0 ers - what have you done today to give your _customers_ more security?

-r.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Eric D. Burdo — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 09:13:20 -0000

Scott Hanselman posted an article on Browzar. Looks like it didn't work quite as intended.

http://www.hanselman.com/bl...

And if you read the comments there, you'll find some caveats to Browzar and a few alternatives.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

booger — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 07:04:11 -0000

Rousingly good stuff here. I'm think that I'm beginning to get the post-MS blog strategy...blog about whatever is at the top of TechMeme in order to boost pagerank.

Seems like it anyway

Booger

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Scott Hanselman — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:45:07 -0000

I took a brief look at Browzar, and it is incomplete in it's promises.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Cody — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 01:23:44 -0000

"I was talking with a geek who’ll remain unnamed and he was telling me how easy it is for someone to sit at a Starbucks, slurp off the local WiFi, and recreate almost everything you do"

You mean, like Wireshark, tcpdump/tcpreplay, dsniff, ettercap, Cain and Abel, kismet, and ngrep? What about vulnerability scanners, like Nessus, Retina, and Sara? What about netcat, Hping2, nmap, and Metasploit?

I really love how Scoble thinks he knows something we don't. Really, Scoble? You can be attacked at a PUBLIC WIFI spot? You don't say!

Seriously, you're a joke, Scoble. Go back to your Web 2.0.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

zappa — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:05:15 -0000

do any of you run a browser appliance in vmwareplayer ?

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/...

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Cody — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:56:49 -0000

Yeah, it's called Open SSH (sshd).

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Jim — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 20:50:38 -0000

Can anyone recommend an easy-to-use SSH setup for Linux? I've got a Mandriva Linux running on a secondary box (I do very little or nothing with it most of the time) and wouldn't mind at all setting it up to run SSH. I did set my main windows box up to run SSH and I set up a tunnel that way, but I never got it working on Linux. I think one of my problems was figuring out how to configure users for Linux SSH, but a full-on, easy-to-use SSH server setup guide for Linux would be super-helpful (and one for Mandriva extra-helpful). So far I haven't been able to find one.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Bill — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:52:27 -0000

@yokimbo

ha. yeah..I know. Have my regrets about it. My only defense is that when you found a company to solve a problem (and continually see articles asking how to solve it) you tend to excitedly blurt out the answer. hey..at least i was open and honest about who I was and didn't do some anonymous post.
plus, the question was asked what I use and I do use our services. :) a wee bit spammy though now that I see it up in black and white..sorry if it proved offensive.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

yokimbo — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 18:49:29 -0000

Thanks for the refresher Scoble. Nice plug for Browzar though. I don't see what the big deal with this is. If you use Firefox (and other browsers probably), you can set it up to flush all private info when you close it. Do we really need another browser? Hell, they could have just made another extension for FF or added some code. That's my $.02.

@16, That's frikin' tacky Bill-topia!

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Dan Blank — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:35:58 -0000

Thanks for the links - but more imporantly for raising this issue. I recently visited an internet cafe that boasted of what it offered, with no mention of basic security measures. It doesn't even seem to be an issue for non-techies.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Michael Gannotti — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:45:35 -0000

Seeing as how I have already been called stupid in the Vista thread.... I have taken the attitude of a technical nudist. In the world of wifi I turn off all security, share all folders, and store all my banking info., IDs/Passwords in a text file labeled ID_Passwords_Fincial_Info.txt in my My Documents folder. Also I have named my machine RipMeOffPC so that when it appears on a network well.... you get the picture. ;-) Just as a nudist believes in full disclosure of themselves physically, I, as a technical nudist, provide full access to my digital assets in wifi land.

Okay I am tired after a long day and making stuff up but I could not resist.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

LayZ — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:31:57 -0000

@14 Fair enough. It guess it's your writing style. You seem flip flop between condescending and clueless.

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Michiel — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:06:42 -0000

wifi isn't secure. The amount of effort you have to break wireless security is minimal. Like many others stated; IPSEC VPN, SSH, HTTPS.

Then again, the amount of people with the wits and the drive to break wireless security make the odds of _your_ wireless connection getting tapped pretty good.

If you really want private browsing Torpark (http://torpark.nfshost.com/) is the answer. But on a public computer (with, say, a nice keylogger installed) I still wouldn't use it.

This 'browzar' seems rather dumb (the lame name doesn't help); you can set pretty much any browser to not store anything these days. Or you could clear the history/etc. And yes, I know anything deleted from disk is still there until it gets overwritten. How many people know about that?

Re: How do you keep your stuff private on WiFi networks?

Cody — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:15:03 -0000

No more, Scoble. No more.