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Wireless Hotspot Vulnerabilities on BBC Watchdog

Wireless Hotspot Vulnerabilities on BBC Watchdog

I watched a program on the BBC last night that highlighted the risks of using any public wireless hotspot.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 302
Total answers/comments: 2
Guest [Entry]

"Gmail's SSL can be turned off. This has advantages and disadvantages. Security being the main concern.

Additionally, SSL isn't infallible. It's secure enough for now, but it's no longer the unbreakable fortress of encryption it once seemed."
Guest [Entry]

"I was half listening to Watchdog last night, can't say I remember seeing anything to suggest that they had tried the following but it could be possible:

Someone could sit in a HotSpot with the equipment to create a ""fake"" Wireless Access Point in a back pack (reading Scott Hanselman's Blog suggests you may only need a Windows 7 Laptop configured correctly), this wireless access point could be used to perform a Man-In-The-Middle attack presenting a fake version of G-Mail or any other service. This should be thwarted by SSL, however, if the user did not heed the warnings or was using an older browser that used confusing terminology they may not notice the Certificate was invalid."