Laptop wifi security?

[Nivforever]

I recently bought a new laptop for university and am running eset nod32 antivirus + windows firewall.

What I was wondering is do I need any extra protection for when i log onto the wireless network on my campus?

Is it safe logging into my poker/online accounts to play while hundreds of others are on the same network?

 

[wij]

AV + Firewall should protect your machine from anything nasty that might be floating around on the network from other machines.

When I was at Uni I always used a VPN to tunnel my traffic through, partly as their wifi was unencrypted but mostly as an awful lot of useful services (Skype, MSN for example) were blocked.

 

[tntcoder]

Make sure anything sensitive you want to use is over SSL.

If your poker sites are plaintext, and you're concerned it would be worth looking at tunnelling non-ssl traffic over a VPN or SSL to an exit node you trust. Its completely possible that someone else on your network can view/manipulate any unencrypted packets you transmit.

 

[J.B]

Like tntcoder said, make sure that any sites your rate as sensitive are being transmitted over an SSL connection.

Bank accounts will be and any online shop worth their weight, couldnt comment on poker sites.

If it's WiFi for a large number of people chances are its unencrypted so any packets being sent over an unencrypted protocol will be available in clear text. Part of my dissertation envolved experimenting with packet sniffing in our uni library. The Unis student email system was HTTP as standard even though it could do HTTPS. Needless to say I gathered a fair few user name and passwords.

 

[Mattus]

Depends on the Uni and the specific setup, really. At my Uni there's no unencrypted wireless - half of the wi-fi networks are WPA, the other half are 'physically' unencrypted but require you to connect through an encrypted VPN.