On Thursday, April 3, 2003, at 04:54 AM, Eric B. Richardson wrote: > At 5:21 PM -0800 4/2/03, Jack Russell wrote: >> >> When you use a wifi network for online shopping, your information, >> credit card data, etc. is going out as a radio signal. It is a >> legitimate concern depending on location. If you live a half mile from >> the nearest neighbor? It's no concern. > > But if you have 128 bit encryption enabled, shouldn't that stop them > from getting that kind of info, at least easily?
True. Also, if you're shopping, etc online, you're likely already using an secure, encrypted browser, so you have two layers of encryption: the data is encrypted *before* it's transmitted. People are unnecessarily paranoid in some cases, though the encryption behind WEP has been shown to be weaker than some 128 bit isn't trivial to break. Heck 64-bit isn't exactly trivial, though it's weak by modern standards: it only takes a small cluster of computers to break within a few days... Also, access to your Base station can (Probably, I'm unfamiliar with the intimate details of the ABS, but this works on other 802.11b systems) be restricted to specific ethernet hardware addresses; thus excluding 'drive-by' or casual use like the aforementioned neighbor. (these addresses can be spoofed, though, but they'd be non-trivial to guess, and without access to your internal network, if you're using NAT on the base station, cannot be snooped easily) WiFi can be made secure. Let me put it this way: My wife ordered some airline tickets over the phone some years back. During conversation with the person on the other end of the line, she learned that he was a convict in a state prison in Colorado, hired out as cheap phone center labor. He knew who we were, where we were, and when, exactly, we were going to be gone from home. When you go to a restaurant, you get that ill-mannered, incompetent waiter who screwed up your meal, and you and he both know you're stiffing him on the tip. So you hand him your credit card to pay for the meal. He walks over and swipes your card, perhaps notes the numbers and writes them down. Thieves do NOT roam neighborhoods, waiting for people to use credit cards on their computers so they can steal numbers one at a time. If they have these skills with computers, they're going to hack into one of the gazillions of web store sites hosted on crap-ass unpatched Windows IIS servers and steal credit card numbers thousands at a time. A few years back, here in Tucson, a temp cashier, hired for the holiday season, was caught with a CC reader attached to a palm pilot hidden out of customer sight. Every card she accepted was swiped twice, once to steal it, once to pay for the purchases. Who watches cashiers that closely, especially in a busy department store in a mall three days before Christmas? (she was caught by another, alert cashier, who noticed that this person hadn't gone on break when she was supposed to...she couldn't leave while another cashier manned her station because she'd risk her rig being found...) > -- "Wherever you go, there you are." - B. Banzai, Ph.D. Bruce Johnson -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
