If you have Win XP Pro machine at home. Set it up as a VPN server. On public network, connect to your VPN server before checking email or others stuff.
Hackers don't just focus on getting control of your pc through wireless, they focus on the Access Point itself since many AP's use linux code in them. Cisco had a major arp bug in the airpoint series which is a very common AP and that many AP owners never bother to upgrade them or worst they leave the AP at the default user and password. Hackers look for holes in the AP so they can hijack the AP itself for the purpose of launching a "man in the middle" attack. They find a weak software AP then upload their own code base to the AP restart it and then they own every conversation that passes through it. As to taking over your web page, yes, not that hard to do. They monitor the session to get the id, hijack the session then send you a tcp reset command and you get a error page. Not every error page is the result of a hijack but using public Access Point have a far greater chance being a problem. fwiw Bsulli
No need to go through all that software jargon. Headache... Maybe a hardware key is the solution...i.e. you need a personalized/unique small usb device that confirms you are really the trading acct holder (like the good old days for AUTOCAD)
Why don't all brokers provide a Dongle(hardware key) like eTrade? http://news.com.com/ETrade+adopts+additional+security+for+traders/2100-1029_3-5594914.html
netstumbler just scans for wireless networks that may be within range, it dosn't actually crack or infiltrate them. most software that comes with most wireless cards these days come with software that does just as good a job if not better. the best way to secure your network is to do the obvious and use some sort of encryption like wep, wpa, wpa2 mac filtering or ssid hiding. even if you just use wep for secuity it is difficult for an attacker to comprimise your network. i lot of people like to scaremonger re this. although i did not say it cannot be done. re connection issues that some people have. this is just the nature of wireless networks with the technology still in its infancy. wireless uses radio waves and just like your mobile phone, t.v. ect.....it can suffer from interference problems. with this happens the network drops, windows scans, locates it and tries to re-authenticate. this is when you get the message "wireless network found" and connected. it does not mean you got hacked. re the youtube info. what they forgot to mention is that the home owner should of have some good anti-virus software so he would be able to detect the trojan the war-drivers installed on his server and pc. remember, if you install good antivirus software a large portion of your computer security issues will be solved.
What about the pages you visit when working wireless. It is possible for someone to see or get the addresses of the pages you visit ??? Thanks for any help.
You need to get familiarized with the applications you are running everyday so that you can tell if a spyware is running by looking at processes; use history kills often to clean up your tracks, some are stored in index.dat in your temp internet folder and other file locations as well; goto Help and Support -> Support -> System Config Utility -> Open System Config Utility -> Choose Selective Startup -> Startup, Uncheck any thing that you don't need to run all the time, including spywares or some strange applicatins that were installed without your knowing it.