Protecting my online accounts

Cianos

Hey,
I plan on playing online poker over some wireless networks in the near future. I cant trust the admins of these networks (net cafés etc), and need to know how to protect myself from someone intercepting my data and gaining access to my accounts.

Is firewall/anti virus software enough?

Thanks

matt-dublin

if you have a firewall on your laptop in an internet cafe you should be fine....

The only other way to protect your information on a public network would be to VPN to somewhere or use some form of encrypted traffic software...

But i think its unecessary, as its fairly complicated to trap tcp packets and find out what they are...

so simple answer....

Firewall is fine, ie..
windows firewall, zone alarm pro, symantec firewall or mcafee internet protection should all be fine

Stephen

Does your poker site use SSL encryption? If not they could just sniff your traffic.

Khannie

matt-dublin wrote:

its fairly complicated to trap tcp packets and find out what they are...

This is not true. It is very easy to examine unencrypted tcp packets. Ethereal / wireshark does all the hard work for you (we use this in work for software debugging purposes. It is very powerful kit.).

edit: You need to be on the route to the destination though, so other users in the net cafe wont be able to do this (except the admins of course).

matt-dublin

yes you can see what the packets are for but isn't the easiest to find out the exact information is in each packet.

Cabaal

Its very easy see what people are typing, sending as passwords or even what webpages their looking at as already mentioned by Khannie,

Driftnet which is another app that can allow you to see parts of webpages being viewed by people, I';ve done it to friends and its extremely easy find out somebodys passsword for sites/services when packet sniffing

The only thing is once its a secvure connection you'll be fine