I have a laptop to which I only have access a Wireless router (open as I am not sure how to set up the security) and a DSL router. Apart from somebody snooping on me while I am online, can anyone access historical data stored on the Wireless and DSL routers to find out what I have been up to while I was mailing or surfing the Internet?
Many thanks to anyone who can anwer this question.
F
Well, you know your traffic can be sniffed. That would be the usual avenue of attack after spyware on your machine. Your ISP probably keeps maillogs for a certain length of time showing at least To: addresses, and perhaps Subject: . But they typically don't give these out except to law enforcement with a search warrant.
Cheap consumer-grade routers typically have small DNS caches that are not easily accessible (takes proprietary knowledge of the router OS). These caches don't survive power cycling.
More important is threat analysis. Who is your opponent? Why are they interested in your information? How much are they willing to pay to get it? What will a breech cost you?
-- Robert
Wireless is like a hub, so anyone listening while you are online could easily sniff open system traffic. If you do Windows file/printer sharing, they could also access any shared resources. They could also use your system to dump a load of spam or worms on the internet, and you could get blamed, since to the outside world, it originates from your internet IP.
Yes.
Be sure to wear your tinfoil hat while surfing.
Actually the answer is probably no, the devices are generally passive in that they don't act as storage for very much data. Some have HTTP logging for things like parental control filters. But basically since they don't have much in the way of memory on them there's not much they can keep.
What someone could do is simply have another device listen to your wireless traffic. It's trivial to setup another PC with an wifi sniffer that logs packets. Whether or not they care about you and your abberant online behavior is another matter, probably not.
Anytime you're paranoid enough to worry perhaps it's time to rethink the behavior.
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