Using wireless laptop at a hotel

mikeinjersey

Solid State Member
Messages
6
hello, I was wondering if anyone knows how secure the wireless networks are in Vegas. Like the hotels over there. Im going to take a vacation in a few weeks and will be bringing my laptop. They say they have free Wifi.

I use Firefox for my browsing and already have my passwords saved when I view sites that require a username and password. For instance like these forums.

like for username i'd put "mikeinjersey"
and when I click on the password area, its already filled in for me.. then I hit enter.

Mcafee and my Firewalls are already up to date. Is that enough? Do you think they could hack my password to my forum sites or would it be difficult?

any info would be much appreciated.

mike
 
yes they could. the passwords are just saved in cookies afaik so if they can hack into your computer they are in business. with a good firewall you will be ok and i doubt people in vegas will randomly try and hack into your laptop anyway
 
yes they could. the passwords are just saved in cookies afaik so if they can hack into your computer they are in business. with a good firewall you will be ok and i doubt people in vegas will randomly try and hack into your laptop anyway

But I mean the data that is flowing wirelessly over the air...cant they hack it that way aswell? I'll need to call them up on monday to see if they have any wireless encryption enabled..like WPA.
 
they can sniff for packets and stuff to crack the wep/wpa. as for sniffing for other types of data im not sure. im no hacker, but im sure it can be done some how.
 
I wouldn't worry about the cookies on your computer. As long as you run some kind of firewall you'll be safe from anyone thats just casual about getting at your data. Where your going to get screwed is by someone sniffing your traffic out of the air or across the wire (depending on how they give you their free internet). Many web sites don't encrypt traffic during the logon process (I'M GLARING AT YOU GMAIL) and anyone can read your usernames and passwords as you send them. You could install torpark, this would give you a bit more protection but as a general rule, if its important enough to require a password, its important enough to not do on a public network.
 
you should just make sure that you have the latest version of your firewall and anitvirus definitions before you go and make sure that you do not leave your laptop on and connected to the network when not in use.
 
wats he said ^
also i suggest running anti virus scan right before you go to bed
 
as long as you have an antivirus in the background it should tell you if you suddenly get a virus. i wouldnt bother scanning unless you feel the network is a serious threat
 
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