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I live in a rental house, and use the house-owner's wireless network to connect to the internet. The owner can see who is connected to his wireless network and I had a few questions regarding this matter:

  1. Can he see which websites I visited?
  2. Can he crack my email password and see my email contents?
  3. Can I know if he is hacking into my computer?
  4. How can I protect myself against this?
Rory Alsop
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surya
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    Look up man-in-the-middle attacks; that's basically what the owner can do. The main question here is: do you trust this person? (Bear in mind that you're renting a house from them, so they could theoretically let themselves in at any time and get access to all your stuff, so if the answer is "no", consider finding new accommodation). – anaximander Jun 28 '13 at 12:24
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    Who the devil downvoted this? It might be a noob-flavored question but it is a legit security-related question. – shieldfoss Jun 28 '13 at 12:49
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    Your question has answers in http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/34764/is-there-any-security-threat-with-open-wifi-connection , http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/14927/is-my-computer-at-risk-of-being-hacked-when-using-public-wi-fi , http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/37597/how-to-use-public-wifi-safely , http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/30261/if-someone-hacks-my-wi-fi-connnection-what-can-they-see-and-how – Adi Jun 28 '13 at 12:51
  • You may be interested in this presentation by Kelmman Meghu from checkpoint: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/32041471 He shows how he deep analyzed his family and freeloaders on his wifi and how much information he could steal and obtain from the traffic. – Eric G Jun 28 '13 at 17:25

1 Answers1

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1) Yes, atleast the certificate which contains the TLD even if you use SSL, the full contents if you don't.

2) If you are not using TLS or SSL to access your e-mail server, he doesn't need to "crack" anything, he can just read the password being sent on the wire and can see all your e-mail. Use of TLS or SSL when connecting to your mail server will prevent this.

3) If he was any good, you wouldn't be able to, but keeping it patched and running a firewall should provide reasonable protection.

4) See each individual answer for countermeasures. Additionally, you could use an encrypted VPN. He'd know you were using the VPN, but the VPN would prevent him from knowing anything you were doing. This, however, requires a VPN provider and the VPN provider would still be able to tell the same info you are worried about the owner doing.

AJ Henderson
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