Am I wirelessly secure? Using VPN and public network.?

Question

I'm using a Cisco VPN client provided by my school which I connect to after I connect to a public network. Does this give me more security and can I send things over the internet without worrying about wardrivers and hackers?

I'm not exactly sure what the VPN Client's job is but it's transport is IPSec/UDP and uses 128 bit AES encryption (taken from its statistics)

Answer 1

The VPN client provides you secure access to your school's network. The traffic going across the tunnel to your school's network is secure. Any traffic going to the internet from your machine is probably not secure.

Although it's possible to do so, it's highly unlikely that you are getting internet access through the VPN tunnel. As such, it's not providing any added security for your machine.

You should never connect to the public internet without a firewall. And you must keep in mind that traffic on public wireless access points is completely open to interception.

Answer 2

Actually, you are likely not secure.

This is a common myth about coffee shop, internet cafe and hotel wireless networks. Here's why:

A VPN will create a secure connection from your laptop to your VPN destination. This means that data sent to and from your workstation over the VPN destination cannot be read by someone who might be 'sniffing' the data.

However, you still have a TCPIP address on your public network, and unless your workstation is secured, anyone with hacking experience/tools could get into your workstation.

What you need to do to protect yourself is ALWAYS run a personal firewall on your workstation. This way you can specify which traffic you want to come in and out of your workstation. Windows XP2 has a personal firewall built in.

1. Open Start - Settings - Control Panel - Network Connections
2. Right click your Wireless network icon, and select Properties
3. Click the advanced tab
4. Click "Settings..." under the Windows Firewall section

If you don't have Windows XP, consider alternatives such as ZoneAlarm (www.zonealarm.com)

Answer 3

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Answer 4

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