Hot Spot Shield

mnosteele52 · Post by **mnosteele52** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:08 pm

Hot Spot Shield - Has anyone used it or heard of it? Is it legit and does it work ok?

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 7:12 pm

Well its on major geeks so it should be legit, but its 1.0, danger danger! lol

TonyT · Post by **TonyT** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:12 pm

I joined the site & downloaded the app but won't install it just yet. I could find no docs about it at the site. Google search reveals:

and provides consumers with private and secure access to the web through an encrypted VPN channel.

Sounds pretty good. I can attest that there is NO such thing as secure wifi. On my linux laptop I can run an app called Kismet that will grab ALL available wifi packets in range & even decrypt weal ssids and it will also discover a ssid even if the AP has ssid broadcast turned off. I have seen users' email usernames & passwords, their email messages, ftp names & passwords, the websites they visited, etc. That Hot Spot Shield solution is desperately needed for wifi market.

mnosteele52 · Post by **mnosteele52** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:05 pm

Thanks for the input Tony, as YARDofSTUF said, it should be an ok app coming from Majorgeeks but until it's tested you don't really know. I'm going to give it a shot, I don't use Hot Spots often, but when I do security is a major concern.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:35 am

Wondering what their catch is..briefly peeked at it...if it encrypts..there's something on the other end. That "something" costs money.

VPN's the way to go if doing confi stuff from pub hot spots...in those cases..I'll VPN to my office or home and RDC from there on.

cyberskye · Post by **cyberskye** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:17 pm

I was just looking at this today - http://www.anchorfree.com/hotspot-shield/

anchor-free is a site that tracks free wifi in sf/bay area. ----Will be moot once google/earthlink get the free city-wide network online later this year, but still interesting.

I plan on installing it and using kismet (I have it running on my zaurus handheld) and seeing where things go.

Tony - kismet is really just a frontend for airsnort - a mighty fine package and very familiar to those accustomed to snort on wired-nets.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:43 pm

Speaking of cool little utilities.....if suspicious of activity on a wireless LAN...AirSnare is a neat little one to find "unwelcome intruders".

Comes with Ethereal and WinCap

http://www.download.com/3000-2092_4-10255195.html

cyberskye · Post by **cyberskye** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:44 pm

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/S ... ield.shtml

Check ou the screenies - it uses ssl to proxy page requests (based on the config and logfile entries; tun device is a vrtual vpn adapter). Maybe a network of ssl-proxies set up - there are many companies listed that are members of anchorfree(?)

I'll be looking at throughput across several of the member hotsposts - there are 10 within blocks of me, so I can check several at the same time.

Softpedia claims that it is mal-free. I am having trouble finding actual reviews, however.

EDIT: Here ya go - http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3611816

cyberskye · Post by **cyberskye** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:55 pm

Logfiles have a lot of similarities with OpenVPN logfiles - it's open source so the cost of building this could have been really low. Several components of OPenVPN are BSD-style (vs GPL) which doesn't require provding the sourcecode (among other things).

TonyT · Post by **TonyT** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 5:46 pm

cyberskye wrote: Tony - kismet is really just a frontend for airsnort - a mighty fine package and very familiar to those accustomed to snort on wired-nets.

Not really. Kismet is a separate app developed independant of airsnort and it's more robust than airsnort. Kismet works by placing the wifi device in monitor mode (frozen in mode monitor) and passively grabs all wifi packets in range and anyone else will have no clue that their packets are being grabbed because kismet sends out no broadcasts, it's receive only, unlike netstumbler for windows or xp built in wifi sniffer wheich send out requests for ssids. Kismet can do so much more than airsnort...

cyberskye · Post by **cyberskye** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:14 pm

Yep - just did a quick dig...

It has branched significantly - the 'interesting packets' module was taken directly from airsnort, but the project has definitely gotten it's own wind ~

TonyT · Post by **TonyT** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 8:39 pm

skye- What linux distro & version of kismet are you running on that Sharp? And what wifi chipset? Does it come with wifi onboard or is it a separate card?

cyberskye · Post by **cyberskye** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 12:58 am

Hi Tony,

They don't sell them in the us anymore - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001W ... 12?ie=UTF8

Codename is tosa (6000N) comes with wifi in, but crappy chipset so I use SDIO. I got it for $400US - price went up to a little over 1k a few weeks after I got it.

There are many custom ROMs that you can install that are better than the Sharp one

--opie (open Palmtop Integrated Env)- http://opie.handhelds.org/download.php
--open zaurus is held in regard - http://www.openzaurus.org/wordpress/
--<you'd love this one> pdaxrom which is built on debian

- http://www.pdaxrom.org/

Skye

TonyT · Post by **TonyT** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 7:36 am

looks cool!
The pdsxrom has wireless-tools package pre installed.