Protection offered by vpns

Will a vpn like xerobank protect a home wireless network from hackers? Will it provide protection for computers on a home wireless network which has been compromised?

 

It depends on what you mean by "protect a wireless network from hackers". What kind of threat are you dealing with? How is the hacker attacking your wireless network?

• If you are facing an adversary who wants to sniff your traffic, and so intercept your wireless communication, then yes, a VPN anonymizer will protect you from that. In the same way, setting up properly your wireless network (see: use WPA or better WPA2, with a random 63-charachters long password) will protect you the same for free.
• If your adversary wants to perform a DOS (Denial Of Service) on your wireless network, then no, no matter what kind of VPN you use, you still won't be able to protect yourself.
• If the threath you are dealing with is something different, please tell us so we can help.

 

I am primarily concerned with two issues: a) someone gaining access to my wireless network and using this access to gain access or to send malware to my computers on the network OR b) if one of my computers were infected would it infect the other computers on the network?

Furthermore if one of my computers was already compromised by malware for example a keylogger or something allowing a hacker remote access, would getting a vpn service help prevent the hacker from sending receiving info from said malware?

A third question I would like to know is are computers wired to the network be vulnerable if the wireless network is compromised? Thanks.

 

WPA is hacked proven unsecure by german researchers.

 

Well, not quite. WPA setup with TKIP was cracked and proved insecure. The answer is going into your router configuration and switching to AES.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/wpa-cracked.ars

 

a keylogger would only affect you if it was on your computer or the host computer connected to the network.that is why you always keep your computer up to date with all patchers and run a good antivirus/antispyware program.also if you are using firefox or internet explorer you can download keyscrambler personal it is an add on and will defeat most known keyloggers.
say you take your laptop to coffee shop and that network is compromised by hackers who are looking to steal creditcard data well than using a vpn would deffinately go a long way in protcting you cause as soon as you connect to that network your protected thru this vpn.but always make sure the vpn you are running is from a reputable company like Xerobank or Surfbouncer or Steganos.if i were you i would try to avoid using pptp vpn's cause they are known to have vulnerabilites in the pptp protacol.i mean a pptp vpn probably will protect you against most hackers and crackers but it is nowhere near as safe as the open vpn project. and although 128 bit AES is considered to be still safe i would look for a vpn that offers 256 AES just to be on the safe side.

 

If I don't remember wrong, WPA even with TKIP is still secure as long as:

- you use a strong wpa preshared passkey
- you keep a short life of temporary keys

which are advisable even when using WPA2

 

Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but cracked is cracked. It's the "as long as," that is the problem. Technically, only WPA w/ AES has not been cracked.