Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you secure yourself on public WiFi?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 76 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure yourself on public WiFi?

#21

Post by w1ntermute »

ax0n wrote: post #14

My long answer is here: http://www.h-i-r.net/2008/08/defcon-paranoia.html The short answer: I back up my data. I encrypt all sensitive data on my laptop and don't access it in uncontrolled environments. I tunnel everything (usually with OpenSSH Dynamic Proxy) and then I run a firewall ruleset on my laptop that: 1) Permits tunneling to my server, 2) Permits anything on localhost, 3) Blocks all other incoming or outgoi…

Is there any way to do this at the network device level (on Linux) so that individual applications don't have to be configured to use the proxy? That's the main source of my reluctance to do this.

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure yourself on public WiFi?

#23

Post by theBobMcCormick »

I guess my question would be: What additional threat do you thing public wifi poses, as opposed to any other internet access? IMHO, you have to assume that any unencrypted traffic over the internet could be sniffed, etc.

The only additional threats I can see would be threats against your PC directly, rather than your traffic.

Am I wrong?

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure yourself on public WiFi?

#26

Post by whyleyc »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #23

I guess my question would be: What additional threat do you thing public wifi poses, as opposed to any other internet access? IMHO, you have to assume that any unencrypted traffic over the internet could be sniffed, etc. The only additional threats I can see would be threats against your PC directly, rather than your traffic. Am I wrong?

As I understand it unsecured public WiFi is significantly more threatening when compared to standard hard-wired Ethernet as all your traffic is visible to any other user connected to the same network with a packet sniffer.

It's much, much harder (but not impossible) to do this on a hard-wired connection - there's a useful discussion as to why here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1828201

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure yourself on public WiFi?

#27

Post by ax0n »

w1ntermute wrote: post #21
ax0n wrote: post #14

My long answer is here: http://www.h-i-r.net/2008/08/defcon-paranoia.html The short answer: I back up my data. I encrypt all sensitive data on my laptop and don't access it in uncontrolled environments. I tunnel everything (usually with OpenSSH Dynamic Proxy) and then I run a firewall ruleset on my laptop that: 1) Permits tunneling to my server, 2) Permits anything on localhost, 3) Blocks all other incoming or outgoi…

Is there any way to do this at the network device level (on Linux) so that individual applications don't have to be configured to use the proxy? That's the main source of my reluctance to do this.

In Linux, most applications respect the http_proxy environment variable. It's the closest thing Linux has to a system-wide proxy setting as found in the more mainstream platforms.

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure yourself on public WiFi?

#28

Post by JoeBracken »

carbon8 wrote: post #11

For the past 4 or 5 years I've been using SSH tunneling. I set up a location in OS X network preferences using the exact technique described in this comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1828631 . I usually tunnel through my router at home which runs DD-WRT. I use SSH Tunnel manager to manage the tunnel http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/stm/ . Once it's set up, all you need to do is switch your network location to…

I've got a similar setup using SSH Tunnel Manager to tunnel to a co-located Linux machine running squid proxy. All my applications used the proxy connection via the tunnel (browsers, IM clients, etc.).

Took some initial configuration time to get things setup but now its just one click in the SSH Tunnel Manager widget to get things going anytime I'm working remote.

VPN may be easier but an SSH tunnel gets it done.

Re: Ask HN: How do you secure yourself on public WiFi?

#29

Post by drinian »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #23

I guess my question would be: What additional threat do you thing public wifi poses, as opposed to any other internet access? IMHO, you have to assume that any unencrypted traffic over the internet could be sniffed, etc. The only additional threats I can see would be threats against your PC directly, rather than your traffic. Am I wrong?

It's much easier for an attacker with few resources to go fishing for passwords, etc. over an open WiFi connection than it is for that person to somehow gain physical access to an ISP and install a packet sniffer.

So, the number of people who could conceivably be eavesdropping goes from a few (unscrupulous IT workers and law enforcement) to very many (everyone who can figure out a WiFi packet sniffer).

Post reply on HN