Network Security Question

logox

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Jun 18, 2011
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Hey, I am transferring to a different college this fall and I will be living in an on campus apartment. The apartment has Ethernet and wifi connections, but I am concerned about the security of the network due to the whole floor sharing the same connection. Am I just being paranoid, or should I take some kind of precautions (VPN or Tor browser?) to make sure that my info/passwords/history are kept safe? Not that I have anything to hide, I just don't want people seeing everything I do or being able to see my login info.
 
Solution
You should likely only use a wired connection unless they are using 802.1x security on the wireless. You would know because it will say enterprise rather than pre shared key. If they use pre shared keys or worse no encryption you do not want to use the wireless. Obviously if it is not encrypted anyone can see the traffic and if they use preshared keys then anyone that has knowledge of the key can use the key to decrypt other users sessions. If you use wireless you need to use some form of VPN especially in a college...way to many bored script kiddies that are wannabe hackers.

There are attacks on wired connections but if they are smart they have protection on to prevent ip and arp spoofing enabled.

In most cases https is good...


Most campuses use enterprise grade network hardware. The connection between your PC and the campus's gateway will most likely be encrypted
 

Finallight

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May 14, 2014
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Your best bet would be to directly ask the college you're going to but usually the internet in those places has some degree of security, as you should need to log on with a combination of your own personal username (or equivalent) and a password. If you're really worried about it you can make an effort to put some more security in place but as I said earlier your best bet would be to actually ask the college.
Hope this helps, sorry if its incorrect in any way (I'm very new)....
 

logox

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Jun 18, 2011
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That's good to hear! Thanks!
 

logox

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Jun 18, 2011
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I tried that but the tech department does not have a phone for questions like that, and the secretary I was able to get in touch with had no clue lol.
 
You should likely only use a wired connection unless they are using 802.1x security on the wireless. You would know because it will say enterprise rather than pre shared key. If they use pre shared keys or worse no encryption you do not want to use the wireless. Obviously if it is not encrypted anyone can see the traffic and if they use preshared keys then anyone that has knowledge of the key can use the key to decrypt other users sessions. If you use wireless you need to use some form of VPN especially in a college...way to many bored script kiddies that are wannabe hackers.

There are attacks on wired connections but if they are smart they have protection on to prevent ip and arp spoofing enabled.

In most cases https is good enough to protect anything sensitive just never ignore any warning about a certificate being invalid and check every now and then right click on the url and verify that the certificates are being validated by a well know certificate server like VeriSign.
 
Solution