[Noisebridge-discuss] WPA ant other network Q's

[Micah Lee]

> 1) why isn't WPA enabled for the wireless, surely that will help with
>   some of the paranoia

I didn't have anything to do with setting up the network, but enabling
WPA wouldn't help at all if everyone knows the password. It might make
it a little more work to eavesdrop on people -- like you'd have to
sniff the encrypted traffic and then run airdecap-ng on it before you
can look through it in plaintext. And as far as man-in-the-middle
attacks goes, WPA doesn't change anything in terms of ARP poisoning
and things like that.

I think keeping the network open is better because encrypting won't
actually increase security, and it might make it a little more
difficult for people to connect to the network. Really if people are
paranoid about the network it's a great opportunity to learn how to
protect yourself on open networks. Really all you need is an SSH
account on a computer somewhere on the internet (I'm sure there's lots
of people at NB who'd be willing to get them out) to tunnel traffic
through, an ssh client (which works in all operating systems), and the
FoxyProxy Firefox extension. Then you can do most anything on the
noisebridge network without having to worry about getting eavesdropped
on.

Micah