All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

If you connect to the internet wirelessly, a firewall and antivirus software won’t prevent possibly sensitive information — transmitted from your laptop to the router — from being seen by packet sniffers. Why do you need to implement a security system like this? (My emphasis added.)

Uses of packet sniffers: “Spy on other network users and collect sensitive information such as passwords (depending on any content encryption methods which may be in use)”

The bits that fly through the air are probably unencrypted by default. In a setting where the wireless access point is wide open, your data can be transmitted in plain text.

When I bought my Linksys WRT54GL and installed DD-WRT last July, I didn’t realize I didn’t need to use Hamachi and Remote Desktop to prevent packet sniffing.

Five months before I bought my new router, Scott Hanselman wrote, “Configuring PPTP VPN with alternate Linksys Router Firmware.” Here’s some additions I’d like to offer:

• My server IP is the same as my router.
• Dynamic DNS through DynDNS is free!
• In DD-WRT v23 SP1, you can find the PPTP Server settings under Administration > Services.
• Generate a password from GRC, and see Microsoft’s Password Checker.
• I manually selected MS-CHAP v2. It seems secure enough to encrypt all my packets.

Today, I’m at the Arcadia Public Library working on an essay and studying for finals, in addition to testing PPTP VPN for the first time ever. Trying to scare my mom, I printed to my home printer. I browsed my home computer’s shared folders. Lastly, I was sniffing packets with Sniphere. Filtering my assigned IP address at the library, all of the packets showed a bunch of gibberish. Yes!

Unlike the Hamachi solution, there shouldn’t be any downtime because my router is always on. Also, I don’t need to keep my computer on, unless I need file access. I think this means I don’t need Hamachi anymore.

Besides buying the DD-WRT-supported router, which I needed anyway, this setup was free!

Hamachi - What can you do with it?

I just had to document this: I’m at the Arcadia Public Library, and I’m connected to my home computer via Hamachi/Windows XP Remote Desktop perfectly. I came only to test it out, and to see how the speeds are. I basically feel like I’m at home, despite the chatter around me at the other tables. So much for a library being quiet, huh? Anyways, I’m stoked!

Hamachi looks like a promising tool to setup a VPN connection from my laptop on some WiFi connection to my desktop computer. After listening to the Security Now podcasts episode 18, I’m trying out Hamachi.

I initially started with 0.9.9.9. Like Steve said, it really does look slick. What’s funny is that within a minute after installing it on my desktop, 28 people must’ve installed Hamachi before I was able to get it running on my laptop. Popular? Sure looks like it!

1. Download and install Hamachi
2. Configure new network on main computer, using 63 random printable ASCII characters for the network password
3. Load the network that I created on the main computer, so I can access my home computer
4. Connect to home computer thru the IP address given by Hamachi

My goal is to be able to connect to my home computer via Remote Desktop Connection. Well, the stable version wasn’t working for me. I tried connecting, but my desktop would freeze up and nothing would display on my laptop. So, I jumped into the 1.0 beta version, and finally was able to use RD [thru Hamachi] from my laptop to my desktop. Sweet!

Quoting from the transcript of Security Now! Episode #18:

So, for example, many people have written saying, hey, I love using Remote Desktop, but I’m concerned about its security. What should I do? Well, they should be concerned about its security because Remote Desktop does not have strong authentication. So it is subject to man-in-the-middle attacks, and it can be compromised. In fact, the current version of the Cain & Abel Cain tool has the latest support for the current RDP protocol, which allows - and, I mean, it actually builds a file, when you’re running Cain, of everything you do over your Remote Desktop session. So here Hamachi solves the problem of wanting one computer to connect to and control another. [..] So you’re able now to securely and safely use Remote Desktop through this Hamachi link with absolutely no concern that it can be eavesdropped upon.

It is a virtual private network, peer-to-peer secure tunneling system that, I mean, I can’t find a single fault in it. I mean, I’m using it. I’m in love with this thing.

What’ll I be using this for? Anytime I’m on a WiFi connection. I can hit up the public library, or use the connection from my friends’ house, without worrying about people eavesdropping on me.

On a sidenote, there is a forum thread on how to setup full internet access over Hamachi. It’s experimental right now, so I’ll just put up with RD. I’m not complaining!