Lock Down Your Public Wi-Fi Hotspot Sessions: Five Free Apps

by Sam Dean - May. 13, 2008Comments (3)

Do you ever use public Wi-Fi hotspots? If you are increasingly using them, you have company. A study done by iPass late last year, showed that work-related hotspot usage was up 68 percent in 2007, relative to 2006. Airports topped the list of public places where users wirelessly connect. The vast majority of hotspot users, though, don't take the right steps to secure their sessions. In this post, I'll cover five free open source and freeware applications you can use to lock down your sessions.

Use a VPN. One of the most common tools that users of hotspots neglect to use is a Virtual Private Network (VPN) application. It’s ironic, because good VPN software is free, and once you’ve installed one, entering one password can put what you’re doing in a secure tunnel. I’ve posted before about my favorite solution OpenVPN, but there are many others. OpenVPN is a long-standing open source project that provides full SSL VPN security, and I’ve found it to be the top tool in my hotspot security arsenal.

Don’t Forget the Firewall. Firewall software, for blocking hackers and other threats, exists within both Windows and Mac OS X, although many people have complaints about the firewall in Windows Vista. The firewall built into Mac OS X is actually very good. Windows users who want to find a good, free open source solution can go with FirewallPAPI, and Linux users should look into Bastion-Firewall.

Use Firefox. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is a prime target for hackers and the Mozilla Firefox browser is renowned for its security features. This is an easy way to boost the security of your hotspot sessions.

Keep Your Logins Secure. It’s easy to disable the feature in your browser that automatically types in log-ins and passwords. In a public place do so as a best practice. In Firefox, for example, go to the Tools menu, select Options, select Security, and click off “Remember passwords for sites.” Also, if you are a frequent Gmail user, sign in with the most secure URL available: https://gmail.google.com. The “s” after http wins you SSL security protection.

Use Antivirus Software. I left this tip for last since it's so obvious. The good news is that there are several good free, open source antivirus applications available. My favorite, becasue it is so regularly updated, is ClamWin Antivirus. You can find many alternatives to this application and all the applications discussed here by searching our database of over 150,000 open source applications here at OStatic.

Do you have any favorite open source security tools?