Security

[Cpt. Morgan]

Before I even start, I'd like to state that everything in the this post was done with my consent, and for educational purposes only. No illegal activities were carried out, I understand my personal data was compromised by my friend who was using a program that shall remain nameless. Again, completely done with consent.

Now that the horse has been beat lets move on.

I was on my friend's network, just using safari etc and in general, carrying out my usual activities. My other friend wanted to see what he could do to my computer/what he couldn't do (after all, it is the very safe Mac... right?). Even with my firewall dropped my computer was 100% okay.

But what was accomplished was all data that was going back and fourth between the router and my computer. He could read. Passwords to paintball/computer forums, here, hotmail, he has them all. I have changed them since so everything is good.

My question is, how do I go about securing my data on a wireless network? My data was compromised within a hour, I'd like to know how to protect it some more than it already is.

Thank you for your time.
Cpt. Morgan

Note: I hope the admins don't close this, as it regards a genuine security issue that effects Mac users, Windows users etc. The basic question is, how do you protect your data on the internet... Something we all use. And to add to that, as stated above, nothing illegal happened, data was deleted after he acquired it etc. I see no reason for this thread to be closed.

 

[cwa107]

That's because your wireless router isn't using encryption. Set your router to use WPA and the packets transmitted over the airwaves will be encrypted. With that said, if you let someone like that join your network, they'll be able to inspect your packets on the network (not over the airwaves). The only time your data is transmitted securely is when you're using an SSL encrypted site (you can tell these kinds of sites from others because they use HTTPS:// instead of HTTP://).

Oh, and one more thing, this isn't isolated to Macs or Windows boxes or even Linux machines. This is true of any machine connecting to a TCP/IP network.