How secure is Windows Vista?

thepharcyde

thepharcyde

thepharcyde

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Just a general consensus, I have a HTPC, which has firewall mcafee etc to secure the pc from outside influences.

I have just aquired a Acer laptop, I have setup on my new wireless network.

Question being other, than a Virus checker, I have not installed any auxillary software bar what the router has to offer.

I access my bank account online, and am just curious as to how safe Vista is etc, I have somewhat doubts on wireless data being transmitted around my house with potential risk of someone picking anything up.

Thoughts?
 
If someone breaks into your router they can intercept any data sent to and from your pc, the os doesn't come into it. Also a firewall won't protect you from wifi connections as they are layer 2 and a firewall runs at layer 3.

Wpa encryption is the minimum you should be using on a wireless connection.
 
Last edited:
Energize said:
If someone breaks into your router they can intercept any data sent to and from your pc, the os doesn't come into it. Also a firewall won't protect you from wifi connections as they are layer 2 and a firewall runs at layer 3.
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unsafe to view bank account on laptop then? PC is connected to the router which also has the modem via ethernet cable. Is this more secure?
 
thepharcyde said:
unsafe to view bank account on laptop then? PC is connected to the router which also has the modem via ethernet cable. Is this more secure?
Click to expand...

It's not a problem because the data will be encrypted so it would need to be brute forced for someone to access it. But for normal unencrypted data they could intercept anything if they had access to the router regardless of how the pc is connected to it. Also if someone did access your home network its possible for them to use something like a trojan/keylogger or even vpn to find your bank details.
 
Energize said:
It's not a problem because the data will be encrypted so it would need to be brute forced for someone to access it. But for normal unencrypted data they could intercept anything if they had access to the router regardless of how the pc is connected to it. Also if someone did access your home network its possible for them to use a trojan to collect the bank account information.
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You are good promoting a loop holed system. Do you have any suggestions as to protecting myself. Mcafee installed on my server (htpc) which has all the Mcafee software installed should detect trojans keyloggers etc?
 
thepharcyde said:
You are good promoting a loop holed system. Do you have any suggestions as to protecting myself. Mcafee installed on my server (htpc) which has all the Mcafee software installed should detect trojans keyloggers etc?
Click to expand...

Should do, just make sure you are using at least wpa encryption for your wireless connection.
 
thepharcyde said:
WPA is password derived as to what i specify, WEB is system numbers/letters. whats the other diffs?
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Wep has a fundamental weakness in the cipher which is why it's so easy to break. Wpa doesn't have those flaws.
 
thepharcyde said:
WPA is password derived as to what i specify, WEB is system numbers/letters. whats the other diffs?
Click to expand...
WPA basically generates the same keys used in WEP based on the password, changing them constantly.

WEP uses the same key all the time, so if you get enough encrypted packets you can find what the key is using a bit of statistical analysis. As said, takes about 2 minutes to generate enough traffic to crack it in seconds.
 
There is two kinds of WPA, you can use just WPA which is better than WEP but you can also use WPA which uses AES encryption. Not sure if all routers offer this but mine does (DLINK).

TrUz
 
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