Comments on: Internet on the Road

By: Internet on the Road Revisited

Internet on the Road Revisited — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:11:56 +0000

[...] Internet situation has proved to be a bit more of an issue since I last posted on the subject. In Pismo Beach, I had good, and reasonably reliable Internet, but since then it’s been a lot [...]

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:31:25 +0000

@Joe thanks for sharing your experience (not just about internet access but uprooting your life). I’ve been thinking about doing something similar for the last year and a half and I just haven’t had the nerve to do it yet.

@Bill What…? Flickr and Facebook both use SSL for signin, just add the s. Also remember that it doesn’t matter if the page you’re entering your user/pass was served over SSL, just that the form your submitting to is. Personally I think a VPN for casual sites like that is beyond overkill, but if you’re looking for a quick setup solution I highly recommend Wolverine Firewall (no relationship, I just like it).

By: What’s something like that set you back?

What’s something like that set you back? — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:17:51 +0000

[...] covered the Why?, and partially the How?, of living in an RV full-time while still running a tech startup. After those two, the most common [...]

By: Bill P. Godfrey

Bill P. Godfrey — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:11:30 +0000

Thanks. Last time I traveled with my laptop, I recall stopping at a restaurant with an open wifi point and I wanted to upload some pictures to my flickr and facebook accounts.

I stopped, when I remembered that I was using open wifi, and I knew that both sites didn’t use SSL, and my browser cookie for those sites are rather valuable to me. I wished I had setup a VPN to my home.

I’ve often pondered writing about my experience, calling it “How listening to Security-Now ruined my vacation.”

By: admin

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:26:11 +0000

All of my sensitive services are already encrypted. Mail, in particular, I use SMTPS and IMAPS to access Virtualmin.com mail. GMail also can be configured to always connect via https, so I have that set. There may be a few less sensitive things that don’t use SSL, like news sites I read and such, but I don’t think any significant harm could come from them being snooped on; I don’t use the same password for any website (I use SuperGenPass, so every site I use has a seemingly random password).

So, no, I don’t use a VPN, but I am careful about making sure sensitive information is always going via an SSL-encrypted and identified connection.

Note that SSL/TLS is designed to protect against all of the problems you’ve mentioned. It provides both encryption and identity information about the connection, so, as long as you take SSL warnings from your browser seriously, it protects against spoofing of all types, and prevents snooping reasonably effectively (SSL encryption, as supported by browsers) is not incredibly strong, but it’s not weak enough for casual attacks to be effective.

In other words, what I’m doing is not much more dangerous than using a WiFi hotspot in my own home (though the hotspot itself is more likely to be compromised in this case, but the big dangers are all prevented by using SSL for all sensitive work).

By: Bill P. Godfrey

Bill P. Godfrey — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:37:06 +0000

Just curious, do you use a VPN to the outside world? If not, are you concerned with people messing with the wifi signal? (ARP spoofing, DNS response spoofing, etc)

Many thanks.