Defensive Computing

Defensively speaking, anyone using a public WiFi hotspot should employ Virtual Private Network (VPN) software to encrypt all traffic/data traveling over the airwaves. Less obviously dangerous, but equally snoopable, are wired Ethernet connections to the Internet in hotel rooms. I wrote about the dangers in hotels last month, see Defending against insecure hotel networks with a VPN.

If you work for a large company, you may already be using VPN software to make an encrypted connection to the home office. Many of you however, need it and don't use it.

Yesterday I briefly described the VPN services, and related costs, from two companies, WiTopia and HotSpotVPN (see More about VPNs: Price and Trust). The head of each company made long comments on yesterdays posting. Since they raise important points, I'm re-publishing them here.

Glynn Taylor of HotSpotVPN

Below is Glynn's comment, unedited.

My name is Glynn Taylor and I'm the founder of HotSpotVPN and WiFiConsulting, inc. I'd like to expand upon my rather terse reply above.

Trust is one of the most important things in the security business. Our privacy policy consists of some strong simple statements that we have stood by for five years. We pledge that we will not sell, share, trade, disclose or rent any of your information to others. We also state that we will not record, sniff, scan or view any HotSpotVPN user's Internet traffic. Beware any VPN vendor that will use your information for other purposes.

Price: We have many more features than any of our competitors and this leads to higher costs in our infrastructure. It also leads to the most safe flexible and usable VPN service available. We use the service ourselves so we built it with everything we wanted it to have.

TunnelGuardian: HotSpotVPN is more than just a VPN. We have software running in our infrastructure that will proactively block malware and optionally block all on-line advertisements from getting to the client's computer. In low bandwidth situations the ad-blocking speeds up the surfing experience. Most importantly on-line ads served through reputable ad agencies can be used to load Trojans and viruses onto a computer. Ad blocking prevents this attack vector from being used against our users.

Most Flexible: With HotSpotVPN2 you have a choice of ports to use and you can switch from tcp to udp protocols. We default to tcp on port 443 so if a browser on a https session works, the vpn will work. You can also change to the udp protocol which provides much better voip streaming video and audio than tcp.

Our servers are spread out across the country so you can choose the servers closest to you to minimize latency. If you are in Europe you would use our east coast servers, in Asia, our west coast servers. It makes a big difference. I have used the service from China, New Zealand and Europe over the last year and this is very important.

Bandwidth: Our goal is to provide quality service to our users without having to throttle their bandwidth down to annoying levels. We have succeeded in this and are actually adding another 1.2 Gigabits during the next change control window (about a week from now).

Thank you.
GT

Bill Bullock of WiTopia

Below is the un-edited reply from Bill Bullock, President of WiTopia.

Hi. This is Bill Bullock from WiTopia. Glynn raises some additional points in his amendment that I feel should be addressed just so they are not misleading. Not that Glynn meant to mislead in promoting his service. I would like to give credit where credit is due, but clarify that we do not charge less because we "skimp" in the areas mentioned.

Glynn said: We pledge that we will not sell, share, trade, disclose or rent any of your information to others. We also state that we will not record, sniff, scan or view any HotSpotVPN user's Internet traffic. Beware any VPN vendor that will use your information for other purposes.

Reply:

Same with WiTopia as governed by our privacy policy. We absolutely do not record or monitor customers' data, sites visited, etc. and also certainly do not share customer information with any third party. Again, we take the privacy aspect of the service deadly serious.

Glynn said: Price: We have many more features than any of our competitors and this leads to higher costs in our infrastructure. It also leads to the most safe flexible and usable VPN service available. We use the service ourselves so we built it with everything we wanted it to have.

Reply:

Yes. We use our own service too. :) I think words like "most" may be misunderstood. I don't believe any VPN provider (or any network service) can accurately claim "most usable," "most safe," "most flexible." We have comprehensive security and usability features in place. Some simply keep "bad guys" off the service, thwart attacks, and enforce solid security policy, and some are convenience such as providing zero-config SMTP relays, certificate regenerators, etc. This gets into network design elements and "secret sauce" that would likely be quite boring to most people. Again, I would sincerely hope both services have serious networking expertise behind them.

Glynn said: TunnelGuardian: HotSpotVPN is more than just a VPN. We have software running in our infrastructure that will proactively block malware and optionally block all on-line advertisements from getting to the client's computer. In low bandwidth situations the ad-blocking speeds up the surfing experience. Most importantly on-line ads served through reputable ad agencies can be used to load Trojans and viruses onto a computer. Ad blocking prevents this attack vector from being used against our users.

Reply:

I have a legitimate question on TunnelGuardian, but HSVPN may have a great answer. Don't know. It sounds like a neat feature if you think ads are slowing your connection.

Here's the question: To deliver the TunnelGuardian service, wouldn't HotspotVPN have to inspect the html code before encrypting it to block malware, on-line ads, etc.? Wouldn't the traffic have to be scanned?

Glynn said: Most Flexible: With HotSpotVPN2 you have a choice of ports to use and you can switch from tcp to udp protocols. We default to tcp on port 443 so if a browser on a https session works, the vpn will work. You can also change to the udp protocol which provides much better voip streaming video and audio than tcp.

Reply:

OK. again with the "most" stuff. :) We will soon allow customers to "customize" on the client side and choose different ports, etc. We optimized a standard configuration/bundle which would suit the needs of most everyone before we allowed customization. This ensures easier support, scaling, and allows us to offer a lower price to more people.

WiTopia's openVPN SSL service is optimized for video and VoIP (using udp) and we designed the PPTP to be more "scrappy" using tcp as its error-correcting ability is superior if there are network irregularities.

Glynn said: Our servers are spread out across the country so you can choose the servers closest to you to minimize latency. If you are in Europe you would use our east coast servers, in Asia, our west coast servers. It makes a big difference. I have used the service from China, New Zealand and Europe over the last year and this is very important.

Reply:

We do agree moving gateways closer to customers is a factor of performance so we have several spec'ed out to be deployed over the next quarter. Although, there are other factors... and from personal and customer experiences from all over the world, I'm not sure this matters as much as even we once thought. Improvements in routing, capacity, peering points etc. on the Internet have lessened the need for geographical proximity. Still, we'll be doing our rollout too. Purchasing shiny new gear.

Glynn said: Bandwidth: Our goal is to provide quality service to our users without having to throttle their bandwidth down to annoying levels. We have succeeded in this and are actually adding another 1.2 Gigabits during the next change control window (about a week from now).

Reply:

So I don't crash CNET's servers with my response, I'll just conclude with, we don't throttle any bandwidth whatsoever. Our only policy is if usage falls completely outside reasonable customer norms, e.g., you try to run a phone company over it, we have the right to be "unpleasant." Haven't had to do it yet!

A note about finding each company. HotSpotVPN is at hotspotvpn.com. The website hotspotvpn.org is from a competing company, one that I know nothing about. This competitor doesn't say anything about who they are, and doesn't even offer a physical address on the Contact Us page. Trust is part of the equation with VPN companies, so I would not consider using this competitor. WiTopia is at witopia.net. There is no website at witopia.com and if one shows up tomorrow it will not be from the VPN company, which does not, at the moment, own the .com domain name.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

Last month I wrote about using a rented VPN (Virtual Private Network) service to provide encryption for everything you do on the Internet (see Defending against insecure hotel networks with a VPN). The need for a VPN on a wireless WiFi network is pretty obvious, but, as I wrote, it is equally important for anyone who travels, as there are a number of ways to be spied on when you use a wired connection in a hotel room. I mentioned two companies that rent VPN service, Witopia and HotSpotVPN.

A reader left an interesting follow-up comment:

"I like the idea of using a VPN service, especially since WiFi is provided with my apartment and I don't want my landlord virtually snooping around. But which of the two is a better service? I like Witopia's price because I could afford to buy an account for each of my computers. How does HotspotVPN justify the higher price. Also, I can't find any information on either as to the information they keep about my surfing habits, marketing data, etc. Why should I trust either of these companies more than my landlord, a hotel, or Starbucks?"

I ran this question by each company and their responses are below. First, some background on pricing and services.

Both companies offer an SSL based VPN for a yearly fee.

The Witopia service is called PersonalVPN, the HotSpotVPN service is called HotSpotVPN-2. Witopia charges $40/year and uses 128 bit encryption using the Blowfish cipher. HotSpotVPN charges $109 for similar 128 bit Blowfish encryption and more for higher grades of encryption.

In his Security Now podcast, Steve Gibson said the lowest level of encryption from HotSpotVPN is sufficient. On this subject, Witopia's website says "Depending on other factors, higher levels of encryption may simply bog down your processor without providing the security you might think."

Both companies also offer PPTP based VPN service, thrown in when you purchase their SSL based VPN. I'm no expert on the technical differences between the two types of VPNs, but SSL is more secure whereas PPTP can often be used without installing software. Both companies note that PPTP is the only type of VPN supported on an Apple iPhone.

(Credit: Matalyn)

HotSpotVPN offers a stand-alone PPTP based VPN service, Witopia does not. Being techies, they gave it the imaginative name HotSpotVPN-1. Quoting their website: "HotSpotVPN-1 is perfect for the infrequent traveler because it is available in 1,3, and 7 day increments for only $3.88, $5.88, and $6.88 respectively." On a yearly basis, HotSptVPN-1 is $89.

Witopia

Addressing the reader comment, Bill Bullock, President of Witopia says:

"These are good and fair questions. I can't comment too much on HotspotVPN's pricing model, but as far as we know, WiTopia's PPTP + openVPN SSL bundle is technically identical to HotspotVPN's PPTP and openVPN SSL bundle...at least as far as the protocols offered. I hear they offer a fine service and have a loyal following. It may just be a difference in strategic approach to the market.

As far as trust, that is a valid point. You need to trust your VPN provider. Not only their philosophy, but their technical prowess. There are a lot of new entrants in the market now with "sketchy" approaches, and many others seem to be single-server shops that may unknowingly make errors compromising your data as they try to scale. I would hope that any established VPN company that has a track record and has been covered positively on the Internet by customers and the press is a safe bet. What needs to be understood, is that our livelihood depends on keeping you safe and honoring your privacy. If we ever compromised that, unwillingly or with bad intent, I would imagine word would get out pretty fast. I can say that here at WiTopia, we take it very very seriously."

HotSpotVPN

Glynn Taylor President of WiFiConsulting, the company behind HotSpotVPN says:

"Our higher price reflects that you will get two vpn's for the price of one. You will get an openVPN VPN and a PPTP VPN for your iPhone or whatever you want to run it on. Also we have a boatload of bandwidth that is intelligently biased towards VOIP. I think we also offer higher encryption than most."

Do Something

Serious techies take another approach altogether. They have computers running all the time that run VPN server software. For a secure Internet connection, they phone home (so to speak) and surf the Internet from the wired connection at their home base, be it a home, office or a rented server.

Whichever approach/company you use, the time really has come for VPNs to be added to the list of standard defensive software for everyone using the Internet.

Update. March 15, 2008: For more on this see A VPN debate: WiTopia and HotSpotVPN

Note: Witopia is witopia.net. Witopia.com seems to be owned by a person rather than a company and there is no such website. All prices are rounded off.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

My point last month, when I wrote that Ethernet connections in a hotel room are not secure, was that wired Internet connections in a hotel are no more secure than wireless connections. The issue I described involved a technically savvy guest, reconfiguring the network to place their computer logically between you and the outside world. Thus positioned, they might as well be watching over your shoulder.

A few days ago Leo Notenboom cited two additional reasons why wired hotel connections can't be trusted: hotel employees can snoop and, if the rooms are connected with a hub, even a nontechie person in another room can easily snoop on your Internet connection (see "Can hotels sniff my internet traffic?").

There are two approaches for dealing with this, a good one and a bad one.

The bad one involves dealing separately with each Internet application. For Web browsing, this means only viewing sensitive pages through an encrypted HTTPS connection. For e-mail using client software such as Thunderbird (as opposed to Web mail), it means a nontrivial reconfiguration of the e-mail environment, which may not even be possible, since not all e-mail providers offer encryption. Then still, instant-messaging, FTP, and other applications have to be dealt with individually. What a mess.

The good approach is to use a VPN, or virtual private network, to encrypt everything.

Virtual private networks

Often VPNs are spoken of in terms of corporate employees connecting back to their corporate LAN. But there are also VPNs for the rest of us. A handful of companies rent out VPNs to anyone, and they're not very expensive.

These rented VPNs provide a secure, encrypted pathway (techies use the term "tunnel") between you and the company renting the VPN. For example, if the VPN company is in Cleveland, your computer makes a secure connection to Cleveland. Everything traveling between you and Cleveland is encrypted. No matter who does what in a hotel, all they can get from you is a useless encrypted bunch of bits.

When your Web pages, e-mail messages, instant messages and whatnot get to Cleveland, they are decrypted and dumped onto the Internet just like everything else. The encryption is only between you and Cleveland, not end to end.

Put another way, someone staying at a hotel in California looking at my personal Web site, michaelhorowitz.com, in Texas would send an encrypted request for a Web page to the VPN company in Cleveland, where the request is decrypted and forwarded to Texas. My Web site responds and sends a Web page back to Cleveland (as far as my Web site knows, the request came from Cleveland) where the VPN company encrypts it and sends it to the hotel in California.

This does slow things down a bit, but with a broadband connection the trade-off is certainly worth it and probably not noticeable.

To use the VPN service, you first connect to the Internet, then start up the VPN software. At this point you are safe, secure and happy. When you are done, first shut down the VPN software, then disconnect from the Internet.

Where to rent

Two companies that rent VPNs are Witopia and HotSpotVPN. Both offer two types of VPNs, PPTP and SSL. The pros and cons of each type of VPN are not something I'm ready to get into. Suffice it to say that a PPTP VPN is usually cheaper, probably won't require software to be installed, and is not as secure when compared to an SSL-based VPN.

The HotSpotVPN-1 service is based on PPTP, while the HotSpotVPN-2 is based on SSL. HotSpotVPN-1 is roughly $9 per month, and HotSpotVPN2 ranges from roughly $11 to $14 per month depending on the strength of the encryption. According to Steve Gibson, the cheapest encryption strength is sufficient. In both cases, yearly charges are 10 times the monthly charge. HotSpotVPN-1 is also available by the day or week.

WiTopia calls their rented VPN service PersonalVPN. The SSL-based version of PersonalVPN is only $40 a year (the equivalent service from HotSpot is $110 to $140 per year). Witopia does not offer the PPTP version by itself, instead they currently throw it in for free when you purchase/rent the SSL-based product.

HotSpot also throws in a PPTP-based VPN when you order their SSL-based product. Both companies point out that Apple's iPhone supports PPTP-based VPNs.

Using a VPN is a small annoyance, but security and convenience will forever be at odds.

For more on this see More about VPNs: Price and Trust from March 14, 2008.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

I could write a whole blog about correcting computer articles in newspapers, pointing out mistakes and omissions. Many times I have corrected and expanded on articles in the Wall Street Journal by Walter Mossberg, but I've also griped about mistakes in the other newspaper I read regularly, my hometown New York Times. Back in May, on my previous blog, my comments on an article that David Pogue wrote in the Times about data cartridges for backing up computer files prompted a surprising rebuttal from Mr. Pogue.

Beats me why major newspapers don't hire computer techies to write about computer topics. Even worse, neither newspaper has the computer nerds on staff review articles for technical mistakes. Puzzling.

With that in mind, todays topic is an article about Wi-Fi security by Joseph De Avila that appeared on page D1 of the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday January 16th. See Wi-Fi Users, Beware: Hot Spots Are Weak Spots.

The vast majority of the article is well done, but not the last paragraph. It offers the following advice from someone named John King, who "... avoids Wi-Fi at hotels in favor of high-speed connections that plug into his laptop. He says he uses Wi-Fi to check email and stock listings if that's the only means available, but only if he's sure of the signal. 'I won't go on a wireless access point that I'm not confident in,' he says."

Who can argue with the main point being made here, that wired Internet connections are safer than wireless?

I can. Or, perhaps more to the point, Steve Gibson of GRC, SpinRite and the Security Now podcast would if he were writing this blog.

Before going into the technical aspects, let's start with the people. The Wall Street Journal describes Mr. King as "... a 46-year-old engineer from Livermore, Calif., [who] works for a company that mines computers for evidence in legal cases. He travels a lot for business..." Nothing about this description makes me think Mr. King is a networking security expert.

As for Steve Gibson, I have enough of a technical background in the subject and have listened to enough of his Security Now podcasts, to confidently state that he is a networking security expert. I doubt that any of my fellow nerds would disagree.

The Important Part

The critical point here is that a wired Ethernet connection is not necessarily a safe haven from the insecurity of Wi-Fi wireless networks.

Exhibit A supporting this claim is Episode #29, Ethernet Insecurity, of Steve Gibson's Security Now podcast. (transcript, 64K audio, 16K audio). This podcast, which explains the security problems inherent in a wired Ethernet network, was a huge eye-opener to me when I first heard it.

By way of background, Ethernet is a set of hardware and software rules/standards/protocols that computers on a Local Area Network (LAN) use to communicate. Ethernet used to have competition in the marketplace, but those days are over.

While the term LAN may invoke a small network, such as that in a house or apartment, a LAN can encompass an entire building, such as a hotel. When you plug a computer into an Ethernet jack in a hotel room, you are on the same network as all the other guest rooms. And that can be dangerous.

As Steve Gibson explained in the podcast, the Ethernet protocol was designed long ago. Before the Internet. Before security was on anyone's radar screen. "Essentially, there is absolutely no security with Ethernet. The assumption always was that it would be used in a LAN setting where you knew and trusted everybody on the network. You were one big happy company..." he said.

The explanation of the vulnerabilities gets somewhat technical and includes terms such as ARP, MAC addresses, IP addresses, malicious ARP replies, NICs, man-in-the-middle attacks, ARP Poison Routing, ARP spoofing, sniffing and promiscuous mode. In simple terms, a bad guy can get in the middle of all Internet conversations (us nerds call this "traffic"). Web pages, email messages and everything else coming and going to the Internet can be intercepted and logged.

As Steve put it "... one bad person in a hotel could arrange to, without much work, literally intercept all the traffic going to and from the hotel's gateway so that all of the email conversations, all of the traffic of any sort that is being transacted by every other hotel guest, they're able to monitor and intercept."

I don't think the danger can be overstated. Wired connections to the Internet in a hotel are not, by their very nature, more secure than wireless connections.

And Ethernet is not the only weak link in the security chain. The podcast describes software that can decrypt some normally encrypted data. "And in some cases, where you have weakly authenticator protocols, like Windows Remote Desktop that really doesn't provide any kind of authentication, man-in-the-middle and complete decryption attacks are easily performed. I mean, it is really bad." said Steve Gibson.

I first listened to this podcast episode while traveling to another city where I was planning on using a wired Ethernet connection in my hotel room. The podcast scared me to the point that I installed a VPN on my laptop. VPNs, while typically used by large corporations, are available to anyone and are the best protection from this sort of thing.

If anyone you know, ever intends to use a wired Ethernet connection at a hotel, then tell them to read this posting. And get a VPN.

You don't read PC magazine for mutual fund advice, and you shouldn't read the Wall Street Journal for computer advice.

Update. February 18, 2008: For more on this see Defending against insecure hotel networks with a VPN.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.