Looking 4 A Lan Cable Connection - Wifi No Good For Banking

[bangkokburning]

Anyone know where I might find a cafe/place with a LAN cable connection preferably on MRT above Asoke (but I am not picky).

Thanks

[welo]

A Lan cable connection will not make it any more secure. No matter which way you connect, you will share a network with all users in the cafe, thus allowing attacks on your PC and sniffing network traffic.

Just check if the Cafe uses a strong encryption (basically NOT WEP but WPA) - though even using WEP will only allow unauthorized users to break the encryption and then do basically the same kind of attacks they could do by just paying a view baht and join the network 'officially'.

If your PC is secured (Updates, Firewall, Antivirus software) and your internet banking uses SSH encryption for communication (look at the address bar for shttp://.. pretty standard nowadays) you are safe. The communication channel between your PC and your bank will be encrypted, and even other PCs on the local network (LAN) cannot spy on it.

The main attack vector for internet banking is

1. installing spyware on your PC that will transfer username/password and other details to the attacker. Even then it will require more sophisticated methods since most internet banking solutions implement additional security checks (e.g. transaction codes)

2. Phishing attacks. Trick you into entering your security credentials and transaction codes into a fake banking website.

Keep your PC clean of malware/viruses! Protect your PC from infections via USB thumb drive, one of the most common ways of malware infections in Thailand.

HTH

welo

[bangkokburning]

Hi and thanks. Did not know that about WEP. Yes, PC is all secure incl "key scrambler". Banks using security auth Verisign/Akamai .

Still, I think I will find a small low traffic place and not use the aircard :-)

My friend had come up with some really cool ways to disallow virus to jump to a flash drive. He posted it here but they killed his link as he was a noob. He has written a number of nice little programs.

Thank you