Safety on school wi-fi

[freyrlynk]

Hopefully I have placed this in the correct spot.

Heading off to continue my education and as I will be commuting back and forth, taking advantage of the school's wi-fi (and perhaps other hotspots), I was wondering if anyone has some good advice to keeping my notebook, running 10.5 (soon 10.6??), safe and secure on these networks.

I really appreciate any info and thanks for the time!

[boast]

going purely paranoid here:

someone could sniff your network over the WiFi since it will probably be "open" without any passwords and encryption. So you would only be safe with sites that use HTTPS. If you have like a mac or linux box at home, you could tunnel your http via ssh (http://embraceubuntu.com/2006/12/08/ssh-tunnel-socks-proxy-forwarding-secure-browsing/) to your computer at home while on the WiFi.

[David G.]

going purely paranoid here:

someone could sniff your network over the WiFi since it will probably be "open" without any passwords and encryption. So you would only be safe with sites that use HTTPS. If you have like a mac or linux box at home, you could tunnel your http via ssh (http://embraceubuntu.com/2006/12/08/ssh-tunnel-socks-proxy-forwarding-secure-browsing/) to your computer at home while on the WiFi.

Is there a complete idiots step by step guide to doing that?

[savar]

Hopefully I have placed this in the correct spot.

Heading off to continue my education and as I will be commuting back and forth, taking advantage of the school's wi-fi (and perhaps other hotspots), I was wondering if anyone has some good advice to keeping my notebook, running 10.5 (soon 10.6??), safe and secure on these networks.

I really appreciate any info and thanks for the time!

Your notebook will be safe. Remote exploits for the mac are rare.

Any information that you transfer over the network, however, is subject to being viewed and/or modified by anybody between you and that host. This is true of any network, however. The only additional threat with Wifi is that if you're on an open network, then it's like standing in a crowded room and yelling. Everybody nearby will clearly hear everything you say.

[angelwatt]

If you have like a mac or linux box at home, you could tunnel your http via ssh (http://embraceubuntu.com/2006/12/08/ssh-tunnel-socks-proxy-forwarding-secure-browsing/) to your computer at home while on the WiFi.

You can also do it through your own machine. I do that through my MacBook for my MacBook. It won't change your location, but still encrypts communication. I've been using it for a while now, even right now.

I used Life Hacker's article on the topic (http://lifehacker.com/237227/geek-to-live--encrypt-your-web-browsing-session-with-an-ssh-socks-proxy) to set it up. It's a little more detailed than the other link provided.

Other than that, you'll also want to make sure you go into your Sharing preferences in System Preferences and make sure everything is turned off that you don't need as they could offer ways for someone to get'cha. Though not horribly likely. Also make sure you have the firewall enabled and maybe turn on Stealth Mode.