WiFi broadband access security?

[Chris Robinson]

From: WasserLand <dwass at optusnet.com.au>

To: Michael Chesterton <chesty at chesterton.id.au>
Cc: "ubuntu-au at lists.ubuntu.com" <ubuntu-au at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Tue, 26 April, 2011 6:56:53 PM
Subject: Re: WiFi broadband access security?

  Michael, Chris, and Paul, Wow!  You guys are       really putting the wind up 
me.

______________________________________________________________

Hi David, paranoia aside (I don't really care if customs wants to look at my 
vacation photos, amateur literary efforts and letters to grandma) I don't think 
I'd consider doing the kinds of financial transactions you are thinking of on an 
open wifi network.

At least, I wouldn't think of doing it without taking the kinds of precautions 
that Josh is telling you about.  I know that such transactions are encrypted, 
but I also know that nothing is completely bullet proof.

While traveling on business for a while some time ago it was a bit of hobby of 
mine to leave my laptop running in the hotel room, cracking the wep 
authorisation codes for peoples wep protected networks. (just to see if it  
could be done and how long it took to do it).  One thing I do know is that takes 
time to defeat encryption, lots of time, so regardless of how many encryption 
layers you are using, it's vitally important to change your passwords 
frequently.

If you think this is being a bit paranoid, think: If you were a cracker looking 
to find an insecure network with some poor sap transmitting his financial 
information over it, where would you go?

Consider setting yourself up so you don't have to do financial transactions over 
an insecure network, or at the very least do not use static information like 
credit cards and account numbers, and change the passwords that you do use 
daily. You could ask your financial institution and see what they recommend - it 
would be interesting to find out what they say.

As an interesting aside, from the reading on US officials being able to 
investigate your laptops and PDA's I realised that my EeePC is the perfect 
Jekyll and Hyde machine.  You see, because the SSD is only 8GB I have an 8GB SD 
card in the machine which mounts as /home.  Last night I did an experiment where 
I formatted a new 4GB SD card and set it up with a dummy home directory, and 
made a minor change in /etc/fstab (changed UUID= to LABEL=).  Insert the dummy 
SD card and boot the machine up, and it's a completely different computer, put 
the other SD card back in and boot and it's back to normal. :-)

Chris.
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