219
votes
Is it safe to pay bills over satellite internet?
Satellite is not safe. Neither is cell data, wifi, or cable Internet. None of it is safe at the layer that you are talking. And that's not the layer that needs to be safe.
It's the data that goes ...
- 127k
142
votes
Accepted
My ISP uses deep packet inspection; what can they observe?
Deep Packet Inspection, also known as complete packet inspection, simply means they are analyzing all of your traffic as opposed to just grabbing connection information such as what IP's you are ...
- 14.2k
113
votes
How would a resourceful government block Tor?
Tor is used to circumvent censorship!
No, not directly. Tor is about anonymity, not about availability. Tor alone does not help its users access blocked content. Tor helps by making it hard to link ...
109
votes
Accepted
How would a resourceful government block Tor?
In order to block Tor, all that has to be done is have the current list of Tor nodes which can be found at the following link:
http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/ip_list_all.php/Tor_ip_list_ALL.csv
and ...
- 14.2k
102
votes
Accepted
Is removing the Ethernet cable from the router (when I'm not using it) a good security measure?
If there is not an internet connection to your device then a hacker is not going to be able to communicate with that device. (Edit: As some have pointed out...this is assuming an attacker is ...
- 1,748
90
votes
Why is it bad to connect internal systems to the Internet?
First, it might be best to fully understand the client (your boss's) needs. It's possible he or she only needs access to one small subset of the data on this server from anywhere and not necessarily ...
- 14.2k
75
votes
Accepted
Was Goggle.com actually crazy malware in 2006?
Let me summarise what you are seeing:
someone navigates to a typo-squat site (goggle.com)
the browser is then flooded with numerous pop-ups, warning windows, etc.
eventually, the anti-virus starts to ...
- 127k
69
votes
Accepted
Why is leaving a passworded SSH over the internet so bad?
Why is this so bad?
Because there are tons of bots just scanning the web for open ports and trying to log in, once a scanner bot finds an open SSH port it may be queued for another bot (or botnet) to ...
- 3,580
67
votes
My ISP uses deep packet inspection; what can they observe?
Trey Blalock's answer describes percisely what deep packet inspection (DPI) is. But I'd like to add three things to hopefully answer your specific questions:
There is a technique of DPI that does ...
- 2,314
66
votes
Can anti-virus/virus protection be used to spy on you?
Any software you install on your system can compromise the system and thus affect security and privacy. This can be done either willingly or because of bugs in the software. And this is doubly true ...
- 196k
50
votes
Can my ISP censor my internet?
Generally speaking, your ISP can't censor Tor or VPNs except by blocking them altogether.
Since you are also "censored" when using Tor and a VPN, it's more likely that either the search ...
- 4,882
44
votes
My ISP uses deep packet inspection; what can they observe?
As stated by Trey, DPI can see the entire content of your network traffic. All of it. If it is plain text, then they see everything that you do.
To add on to Miao's answer:
Things DPI can see, ...
- 1,209
40
votes
Is it safe to pay bills over satellite internet?
I would like to specifically address the question on why security of the underlying mode of communication is not as important as the encryption of the message.
You are communicating with your bank to ...
- 541
38
votes
How would a resourceful government block Tor?
Tor will be actually quite hard to block because of tor bridges:
Bridge relays (or "bridges" for short) are Tor relays that aren't listed in the main Tor directory. Since there is no complete ...
- 10.1k
37
votes
Can FBI or government agencies get hold of my Google Docs files just by confiscating my laptop?
As pointed out by begueradj, any government agencies can access your cloud-stored files through a subpoena to Google. But your question was what they can do when they have your laptop alone and ...
- 49.2k
33
votes
What parties have access to the *full* requested URL of a website accessed via the HTTPS protocol?
Only the TLS endpoints1 can read the the full URL because HTTPS provides end-to-end encryption.
HTTPS wraps the full HTTP protocol, including the request line, request/response body and all the ...
- 44.5k
32
votes
Is removing the Ethernet cable from the router (when I'm not using it) a good security measure?
This would reduce your risk by minimizing the time the attack surface is vulnerable to attack so yes technically it is a helpful security control. It falls into the category of Layer 1 access control ...
- 14.2k
28
votes
Why is leaving a passworded SSH over the internet so bad?
The main risk is that the initial connection can be intercepted by a Man-In-The-Middle, so an attacker can retrieve the password.
The first time a user connects to an SSH server, something similar to ...
- 33.9k
26
votes
Accepted
How do I hide the OS I am using from internet sites?
It is not currently possible to hide the type of OS from a website
A solution against general fingerprinting and obtaining more specific information about your system is to use Tor Browser with the ...
- 436
26
votes
How can a service like Fastly have such an impact on the Internet?
The internet is not as decentralized as you might think. A small number of companies that provide CDN and WAF services (e.g. Fastly, Amazon AWS, Cloudflare, Akamai) serve a disproportionate amount ...
- 22.1k
24
votes
Why is it bad to connect internal systems to the Internet?
Are there some reasons that connecting internal systems directly to the internet is a bad thing?
You're unnecessarily increasing the attack surface.
Here are problems to consider:
An attacker who ...
- 44.5k
21
votes
Accepted
Why no support for TCP Sockets in JavaScript
... but what is the issue with providing a socket API to allow interacting with existing protocols?
This is not a restriction of the language itself but of it's use inside the sandbox within the ...
- 196k
18
votes
Self-signed certificates not working over Internet?
Even if you see a message saying the connection is not trusted does not mean it is not an HTTPS connection.
In order to display or not such error messages, browsers try to validate certificates using ...
- 679
17
votes
Can my ISP censor my internet?
Yes, an ISP can restrict your access to the internet. And they do it.
Here are some examples of how they can do it. I added a quick list at the end of what one can do to prevent their ISP to tamper ...
- 1,508
16
votes
How can a service like Fastly have such an impact on the Internet?
It's all about getting Internet content to the end users (us) as quickly as possible. To make this happen firms like Fastly, Akamai, etc - called Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) - work with content ...
- 161
15
votes
Is removing the Ethernet cable from the router (when I'm not using it) a good security measure?
Given how many attacks are aimed at routers, the number of security flaws / backdoors in consumer grade routers, and the fact your router is an always-on gateway to the big bad internet, I'd say ...
- 367
13
votes
Accepted
How can I detect real location of the user through their IP address?
Geo-ip location accuracy varies wildly from country to country and from provider to provider. Some smaller countries have very accurate internal mappings of IP's to postal addresses but this type of ...
- 14.2k
13
votes
Accepted
Does HTTPS provide availability?
The paper On the Security of the TLS Protocol suggests HTTPS provides availability
No, it doesn't.
Quote of the relevant section of the paper:
II. Security Goals
...
The primary goal of TLS, defined ...
- 31.3k
13
votes
Can my ISP censor my internet?
Your ISP cannot censor the internet with anything finer than entire DNS hostname or IP address granularity. They cannot modify Google search results or interfere with your ability to use Google short ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible