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View Full Version : Using LogMein as a security measure

paulsiu
March 15th, 2009, 07:02 PM
I often go to coffee shop and take my laptop computer with me. The wifi connection is public, so I worry that someone is monitoring my packets. Can I mitigate this vulnerability by using using a product like Logmein to connect to my home machine and then do my web surfing from the home machine?

I figured that since I am using my own machine, I would not have issues with key loggers. Logmein encrypts the traffic, so that other people will not be able to see what I am doing. Would this work?

Secondly, if I am doing this from a cafe machine, using Logmein to access my home machine would actually increase my vulnerability since a key logger will be able to figure out how to access my machine from remote. Is this correct? Is there a way to mitigate this?

Paul
Huupi
March 15th, 2009, 08:57 PM
Why not using Sandboxie with restrictive internet access to keep keylogger nicely confined in sandbox i.e. it can log your keystrokes or whatever but can't phone home,after you finished just delete content of the sandbox.
paulsiu
March 15th, 2009, 10:19 PM
Well, it's because I have no idea what Sandboxie is ;D. I will tried to do some research.

thanks.

Paul
JRViejo
March 15th, 2009, 10:32 PM
paulsiu, here you go: Sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com), FAQs (http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?FrequentlyAskedQuestions) and Getting Started (http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?GettingStarted) Tutorial.
traxx75
March 16th, 2009, 03:30 AM
Many Internet cafés will not allow you to install your own software so using Sandboxie on their terminals may not be an option.

I would generally not login to anything sensitive at an Internet café on their terminal since you have no idea whether they have a keylogger on the machine or just sniffing packets at their gateway.

Using a solution that uses public key (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography) authentication [SSH has this capability, for example] would probably be optimal if you are able to plug in a USB drive that has your key on it. I've not really looked into this, though, so I'm not sure what solutions [free or paid] there are available for this.

At the end of the day, however, since you have the option to use your own machine then using a service such as LogMeIn is a good idea as long as their initial authentication mechanism is secure.