Man in the middle worries

Newbie to wireless question,

My apartmentbuilding resently changed from wireless with WEP key to these guys: 'SMART ZONE - Internet for Apartment Mansion Dormitory µ?µÑé§ Í?à·ÍÃìà¹çµ Ë?? ?ÒÃì·àÁ?ì á??ªÑè¹ ¤?â´ÁÕà¹ÕÂÁ Ãé?ÍÒËÒà Ãé?¡Òá¿'

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so no more encryption & security by WEP, basically nothing now i think!

If i open my browser now (any browser, any url) i see a webpage asking for a LOGIN & PASSWORD also it says: You are currently connected to SmartZone™ network at V Place (V.Place apartments)

Since i do online payments i really would like to know how safe this new situation is thinking of man in the middle attacks and so!

I use winXP with zonealarm firewall, netstumbler and airsnare Netstumbler shows 4 accesspoints and 2 belong to Vplace i guess because they have ssid with Vplace (green & yellow/grey color and no lock)

If i turn on Airsnare i see many unfriendly MAC addresses but thats also because (i think) i didn't mark other people beside myself as "trusted" or "friendly" Some of the unfriendly ones have the name "router" other ones just an IP On the right/below i see things like: Possible mac spoofing detected, entry does not match known OUI's for some of the unfriendly addresses.

What i really would like to know is about this (new) smartzoneonline.com wireless internet solution, if it is possible to fake/spoof the access to this accesspoint using smartzoneonline.com?

smartzoneonline.com comes without security/encryption (no lock in statusbar) Netstumbler also doesn't show a lock...just green color for accesspoint "Vplace"! Can that be unsafe for me / for them (smartzoneonline.com) / or both?

Does this mean data send from me to accesspoint is always plaintext? (hotmail login etc...) Can unfriendly mac's find out my password for hotmail, yahoo..etc...?

Anything (simple) i can do to be more secure as a newbie? (cannot configure the accesspoint since it isn't mine)

Thanks for all help in advance...

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Reply to
MaPo
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Kinda hard to make out what is going on there, as even when I hit the 'en' language link, I still get (whatever that language is). I'm skimming the page for works like 'WPA/WPA2', or 'WEP', but I don't see any.

If it's clear text, anyone can grab your traffic out of the air that's within range. I don't see anything on what part of the site I saw that says they are using even simple encryption. Many networks are open. Of the 7 or so I can see from my apartment, none are encrypted. One time I saw a WPA access point appear, but I haven't seen it in some time (using Kismet).

Unknown isn't necessarily 'unfriendly', just unknown, users like yourself probably.

Not really sure what you're asking here?

For you, if you send private stuff over the line (mail login/pass, credit card info, other such stuff ).

It looks that way. Unless you know otherwise for sure, I'd say assume it is plaintext.

Anyone within range that is monitoring can get it, if you send it.

I'd only use that one for basic web browsing and things I didn't mind people seeing. Why not get a broadband connection into your place, set a wireless router on there, and then connect to that? You could control the ecryption then.

A bit late, I know, but I just found this NG.

Reply to
jayjwa

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