nytimes.com — Any business traveler who has logged on to a wireless network at the airport, printed a document at a hotel business center or checked e-mail messages at a public terminal has probably wondered, at least fleetingly, ?Is this safe??
Aug 22, 2006 View in Crawl 4
kent1146Aug 22, 2006
@... (above poster):As security goes up, compliance goes down. You can lock down your email system as much as you want, but users simply won't use it. If you force them to use it and give them no other option, you increase support costs and risk locking them out of doing whatever it is that they are supposed to be doing.
chedlinAug 22, 2006
I was going to say the same think. For the people suggesting secure IMAP protocols, keep in mind the target audience of this article. I use SSL for Imap and Smtp, but many people don't have that as an option.
mrneutronAug 22, 2006
I don't think that SSL and VPN are equally safe. With VPN they can only tell that you're running VPN and where the other end connects. With SSL someone can see that you visited gay-chat.com, they just can't tell what you discussed on that site.I'd like to know how I can roll my own VPN without having to pay huge fees to my hosting company. Someone digg up that story already.
wyzardAug 22, 2006
If you use a PC as a router on your home network, you can set up OpenVPN so that you can connect to your home network while away from home. Configure it to make the VPN be your default route while it's connected, and all your network traffic will go out through your home router, just as if you were surfing from home.<a class="user" href="http://openvpn.net/">http://openvpn.net/</a>
wyzardAug 22, 2006
Wireshark is a general-purpose packet sniffer. An attack tool would be more specialized, looking specifically at certain protocols (HTTP, POP, etc.) and scanning for specific patterns. You're not likely to find such tools in general distribution, though.There's an interesting program called Driftnet that sniffs out images and displays them:<a class="user" href="http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~chris/driftnet/">http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~chris/driftnet/</a>