Wireless Internet Security: Can Others Listen In On Your Secure Communications?

April 22, 1:08 AMOpen Source ExaminerAndrey Samode

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Your wifi communications are not as secure as you may think. Others can listen to your data, sometimes as easily as to a radio broadcast!

How do I know this?

In a school where I used to work as the IT/Network administrator, I had to set up a wireless network that would be shared between teachers and students. Knowing how clever the teenagers are, the administration was adamant to know just how secure their data would be, so I have been asked to do extensive research on this.
In a short time I was able to:

• Identify the computers and their owners that are logged on the network.
• See who is logging onto which email accounts.
• Log people's email login information.
• Log people's email messages.
• Target a specific computer and gather data about the pages they visit, including the content of the pages themselves.
• Log any FTP login and password.
• Display any of the data/passwords in an accessible time table, revealing in-depth information about who visited what and when.

A little disturbing, no? Fortunately, this was a project done purely for research, and none of the data was ever used for any purposes other than identifying ways how to improve our network security.

But imagine someone with malicious intentions, who wants to exploit your personal information. From my research, I can tell you that it's not that hard.

In the following article (part 2), we will look at the security implications of individual programs and answer the following questions:

• Can people read my emails?
  
• Are my passwords safe?
  
• Should I take some preventative measures?
  
• Is my WEP or WPA/WPA2 router secure?

Continue to PART 2: Wireless Internet Security: How secure is FTP, my email and passwords? What about WEP/WPA2 routers?

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