bandwith theives

Use the wireless control on your computer to turn off the WiFi interface (somewhere in there to save battery power when you don't need it).

Not really, there will be occassional activity with just your computer connected.

Yes, this is a good idea regardless of anything else.

Hardware? This is a wireless newsgroup so I would recommend a good Wireless Router/Acees Point/Switch. Turn off the wireless portion and use the firewall built into the router. A Linksys WRT54G (pre version 5) should do the trick nicely. Of course Linksys makes routers without wireless that offer firewall ability as well.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

No. Your computer will not route their data (send it on to the internet) unless you tell it to.

No. The data will never get to the cable modem.

N/A

Alun Harford

Thanks Alun.

Yo Rico... I made it clear I had no wifi access point but that I was asking a wifi related question. Any way FIDO.

Thanks guys!

Later

Malagente

I'm not convinced.

I think the good firewall is pretty mandatory. It might require someone to hack your system first via the cable modem, but _theoretically_ it should be possible for someone to (a) turn on your WIFI card; (b) put it in ad-hoc mode; (c) bridge it to the ethernet.

How could the traffic get routed unless your computer told it to? The wifi card will be on an internal net address, the CM on an external one.

This is absolutely true.

Anyone who can already access your CM to this extent has no need to hack your wifi - 'all your base are belong to them' already. Mark McIntyre

Well, your computer is an idiot :-) and it does what it's told without caring who tells it. I trust we're agreed that someone who can get into your computer _can_ bridge your WiFi to your ethernet.

You're right that if someone can hack your computer that far you're in deep doo-doo, but since Alun finished by saying that the firewall was "N/A", I still think it's important. The firewall is _never_ "N/A".

No, it takes quite a bit of configuration to allow someone to share your internet, so you're safe.

As Rico said, turn off the WiFi and get yourself a hardware firewall (router) to protect you from Internet attacks. Or get a WiFi router, set a non-dictionary WPA key, and use your laptop wirelessly.