Re: About WLAN and monitoring..

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:45:59 -0800 "F. Fox" <kitsune.or@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>Michael Holstein wrote:
>(snip)
>| So could your web-based email if you've EVER used it from an
>| identifiable location.
>(snip)
>
>I think he's looking at an observer from the local network as a threat
>model. If so, such an adversary wouldn't have the benefit of knowing
>what accounts are being accessed via the Web, if they go over Tor (only
>an agent of the company who runs the mail service, or law enforcement
>would have that benefit).
>
>Of course, this opens up a whole new can of worms; AFAIK, Gmail is the
>only major Webmail provider that can be used via SSL on the Web
>interface (by starting the session with an HTTPS URL, i.e.,
>https://mail.google.com ; if you don't, it'll switch to SSL only for the
>~ login, but actually transmit the subsequent pages [and the email they
>contain] in cleartext).
>
>(If you've used the account outside of Tor before, Gmail would - of
>course - know your identity; however, an observer on the local WLAN
>would not.
>
>Also, since actions over the lifetime of a circuit [~10min] can be
>potentially linked [from what I've read], you'd want to get a new nym
>after you're done with Gmail. On *nix, this can be done with a SIGHUP;
>on Windows, one way is to stop and start Tor via Vidalia.)

     Stopping and restarting tor works, but it's severe overkill if you're
running vidalia.  Just click on "New Identity" instead.  It's much faster,
too.
>
>So unless you're using that one - or using something else to protect
>your content - my hypothesis in the first paragraph is not a good one to
>use in practice.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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