Security using random WiFi …

It’s holiday time and many of us travel. Given the ridiculous cost of data roaming many of us seek to access any random WiFi access point and use it’s capacity.

Please mind that anyone with a minimum set of skills can produce a small access point; PC with WiFi that you access and for example a 3G modem in the other. If this set-up is mobile you can run it on battery for a day. With this set-up you can perform a man-in-the-middle attack to any service you use over the access.

So, you should for sure consider the risks in accessing a WiFi service you don’t know.

So, assuming you still need to access it for cost reasons – exercise “safe access”;

# Best – Use a program to set up a VPN tunnel to a safe point.

This encrypts the transport layer and works for all applications and all aspects of all applications. Please mind – it secures to the transport between you and the point. From the end of the VPN to the receiving server you are still unprotected. Secures you from middle men attacks in the path from you to the end of the VPN, but not from the VPN to the service.

Option 1:

On Android:

http://vpnblog.info/android-openvpn-strongvpn.html

And the computer part:

http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/howto.html

Option 2:

I was advised to use Witopia.

https://www.witopia.net/

Has other advantages – like being able to determine exit points

# Second best – Use HTTPS where possible to your services, to ensure that you have end to end encryption. Only works on a per application:

For GMail;

1) Select the cogwheel
2) Settings
3) General
4) Browser connection: Always use https

For Google Apps you can make iit mandatory for all your users;

1) Go to domain adimistrator interface
2) Domain settings
3) SSL: Enable SSL

Facebook

1) Click the down arrow on the top right corner
2) Account Settings
3) Security
4) Enable “Secure Browsing”

Now you won’t leek these two passwords..