Wi-Fi commuter fears

Wi-Fi on UK trains could leave commuters vulnerable to hackers. Next year free Wi-Fi will be rolled out across a number of rail operators, fruits from a £50m Department for Transport’s (DfT) scheme to increase Wi-Fi on trains. The technology creates a means for commuters to make more productive use of their journey to and from …

[Anonymous Coward]

news?

how is this news? there is no security on the current WiFi offered to the public on trains (paid for service) -or in coffee shops...any network where you just join an SSID and then either get internet or have to log into some captive portal is insecure - its an 'Open' wireless network in which anyone else can sniff/snoop on your internet traffic....the only security you can rely on is VPN or TLS-secured systems - certainly dont do plain auth methods (POP3/IMAP) or visit http: sites with forms on them! in fact, avoid http: systems as anyone can grab your cookies too! :/

the solution? passpoint2.0 systems - 802.1X authentication, per user secure local transit (in educational world this roaming is available in the form of eduroam - in government circles, countries are looking at govroam).

[cosymart]

Re: news?

It should be news. There should be big bold bright notices in these places that say "Free WiFi use it at your peril!" :-(

[Mage]

Re: news?

Exactly why I set up a VPN server on my router. But it's not a solution for non-IT folk. It's not trivial.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: news?

Unhelpfully, simultaneous with good advice about the necessity of using VPNs when accessing public wi-fi hotspots being promulgated, just about all of those I've come across recently actively block VPN traffic - presumably because think of the children, evil pornography might besmirch their systems, terrists, etc. Sky manage to do this even while having a help page telling you to use one of the VPNs they're blocking!

[PyroBrit]

£50M ????

That's seems to be a lot of money wasted. I wonder how much was creamed off the budget to line the pockets of manglement types?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: £50M ????

bearing in mind that EN50155 compliant access points start at around five times the price of your average SoHo box (by the time they're installed, more than that), £50m does't go as far as you may think. Not when you have to pay manglement types, overpriced equipment, and of course some management time at the Department for Transport (for which, by the way, El Reg should be using Private Eye's name, DaFT).