It's easy to spy on your Wi-Fi

[Harbourmaster]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?fi...OHBCQ1.DTL&type=printable

When many of the computer industry's top security gurus gathered in San Francisco last month for a conference, an Atlanta company decided to point its radar toward the airwaves and see how much of the show's wireless activity it could see.

The distressing and ironic answer? The Boston hackers could eavesdrop on more than half of the wireless traffic ... at a security conference!

If most of the people attending last month's RSA Conference have not taken the basic precautions to protect their online activity while using public Wi-Fi, then what of all those civilians setting up shop in cafes and airports?

In short, say computer security experts, people are putting themselves at risk every day.

[Carnos Jax]

What about if you use a public wireless access point and have an encrypted connection to an e-commerce site (such as your bank)? The data from the access point to the bank is safe, right? It's just the portion that get's transmitted to the access point that is vulnerable, correct?

[MGS_forgot_password]

Carnos, SSL connections are safe, even over wireless.

[vision63]

What I've been able to glean over the airwaves:

joe: What 'chu doin?
pete: nothin'
joe: me too
pete: s'Hot here
joe: yeah?
pete: yeah
joe: not hot here.
pete: no?
joe: no
pete: that's cool

[Carnos Jax]

[quote MGS_forgot_password]Carnos, SSL connections are safe, even over wireless.
Thanks for clearing that up.

[mikebw]

I still advocate hardwired ethernet where possible.

[olnacl]

Security is such swiss cheese - we jump through hoops at work that seriously impedes productivity and then I connect my work laptop at home to my wireless network and I get a message that the wireless connection is not secure enough. So I plug it into a wireless bridge unit and the warning goes away. Ha.