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Safe Options for Surfing While on the Road?
Sooner Boomer asks: "My oldest brother is an over-the-road truck driver. He subscribes to several wireless services at truck stops (Flying J, Pilot, etc.). I've tried to help him and educate him as much as possible, but he still has two problems; connectivity (poor signal strength) and security. His truck has a fiberglass shell, so that is not the problem. He has to run IE because this is the only browser supported for the log-in process. We've talked about wireless routers with reflectors on the antennas to boost signal strength, and to help with security. I'm still looking for better security though. Are there "live" linux browsers that can be run once a connection is made in windows? It's really gotten annoying because he has to reformat/reinstall about every two-three months. Ideas? Good trucker jokes?"
I've used my iBook at Flying Js all over the midwest. Safari worked fine to log on. Is he sure about needing IE to log on?
The Tao that can be spoken is not the one eternal Tao
A recent article on Slashdot talks about Anonym.OS, which is supposed to keep your web activities anonymous. Maybe he should look into it.
What Does A Schneider Truck & An Orange Barrel Have In Common?
They both have a dirt bag in them!
Ohhhh... comedy gold!
Since I don't have any ideas for you, here's my trucker joke:
A truck driver stopped at a roadside diner for lunch and ordered a cheeseburger, coffee, & a slice of apple pie. Three bikers came in, and one grabbed the trucker's cheeseburger out of his hand and took a huge bite from it. The second biker drank the trucker's coffee, & the third biker wolfed down the apple pie. The truck driver didn't say a word, just paid the cashier & left.
When he was gone, the bikers snickered & congratulated each other for being such bad asses. As the cashier walked up, a biker growled, "He ain't much of a man is he?"
"He's not much of a driver neither," replied the cashier. "He just backed his 18 wheeler over three motorcycles."
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
And just use the pre-built Browser Appliance virtual machine.
I use IE in debian using crossover office from Codeweavers. I have to travel now and again for work and some hotels use the same setup where it requires that you use IE to make your connection (and yes, safari works too, but I don't have a mac)
All I have to do is make a connection to google with IE, then I use FF for everything else.
Evil Walrus >83=
User agent switcher is an extension for FireFox that will allow you to fake the "user-agent" string identifying your browser.
I'd tell you my trucker joke, but it's only semi-funny.
Well, this should be little different from securing any other Windows machine connected directly to a public network..
Indeed a router might help here, provided it also has some decent firewall functionality. I would myself go for a WRT54GL with OpenWRT, setup as a wireless client and with its wireless connection firewalled and doing address translation.
It would be very nice if you could get around the authentication problem by directly posting the authentication info with some script, woudl also remove the need for IE, but will probably take a bit of scripting in perl or the like, might even be able to solve this one with just some bash script and tools like wget. You'll have to figure out what the authentication page expects from the client. Makes you wonder of course why they aren't supporting WPA and 'enterprise authentication' so that clients get authenticated at the wireless network level and get to use proper encryption. Sould not be difficult to support considerig that many ISPs use some radius server for authentication already anyway and that is all they really need.
When using a router/firewall, the connection will stay up regardless of you rebooting the laptop, so you should be able to switch OS or whatever else you want to do.
But in the end, reinstalling Windows every few months should not be needed provided the WIndows machine has some important tools installed, such as a decent personal firewall, anti-virus tools and some adware/spyware blocker/remover.
Also, you can authenticate using IE, and then use Firefox for browsing I'd say, so unless there are other compelling reasons, I see no reason why running another browser would mean running another OS.
Of course, you could also use something liek vmware or such and run a live linux distro on top of Windows. Refer to the many 'which live CD to use' discussions of the last years for info on that, or just try a few.
http://radiolabs.com/products/wireless/waverv.php
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
If it won't accept that, use the User Agent Firefox module to pretend you're actually running IE.
What is he actually doing that's causing him problems? Downloading spyware apps? Not sure there's a fix for that.
Get a data plan and a PCICMA card from Verizon or Sprint and use that. A lot of the interstates are have EVDO coverage.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
A hitchhiker gets picked up by a trucker. After a while of small talk, the truck driver looks over at the hitchhiker and asks if he'd like to see something cool. The hitchhiker shrugs, and says ok. Then the driver reaches across to the glove compartment, opens it, and a small monkey jumps out. Very quickly without warning the truck driver punches the Monkey, and just as quickly the Monkey pulls down the truckers pants and gives him a blow job.
The hitchhiker is taken back by this, and just sits quietly trying not to look until the driver asks if he'd like to try. Nervously the hitchhiker replies, "Ok, but please don't punch me".
The best suggestion I can muster, short of many layers of security, is the VMware Browser Appliance: http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/vm/browserapp.html
As a sidenote, my nephew is doing the same thing, and his iBook works just fine. His employer has a contract with TA, which is where he has his personal wireless subscription. There's no IE-only problems there for him.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Which Windows is he using?
If he does not have XP, then install ZoneAlarm for him from ZoneLabs. There is a free version.
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Odd - unless they've changed it in the last year, I'd been using Konqueror to get onto it just fine...
It's possible many of them just SAY the site "only works with IE" because that's all they test on, but if you ignore the message in some cases you may be able to get in anyway...
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I have a guide on setting up a secure proxy through SSH here. I use this whenever I'm out on insecure wireless networks.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
The XP built-in one works, but if he's moderately savvy then I highly recommend that he get one that will block both outbound and inbound connections. I use Kerio Personal Firewall, but I know there are others out there as well.
Basically what he should do is treat it as learning for the first while and "teach" the firewall what applications are allowed to connect out. Email client? Let it connect out for SMTP/POP3/IMAP; *maybe* let it connect out on HTTP/HTTPS but I don't advise it. Firefox? Let it connect out. IE? Let it connect out, but possibly with limitations (I let it go but have an alert that displays when it's making connections). IM clients? Allow them to connect to the appropriate services. Anything else? By default it's blocked or at least asks for permission. Unknown apps get an alert popup so you'll know something's trying to get out since that's going to be the best indication of an infection on the system.
fencepost
just a little off
I notice you don't mention any usage of security tools... If he must use IE, then build him a reasonably secure Windows system. (If he's reformatting/reinstalling that often, he's running a horribly configured system.) Get him Zone Alarm, and an AV program.
Since all of my ideas have already been stated, I'll offer a dumb trucker joke. It works better recited, but I'll try to convey it in text:
-Turkey
If you're willing to do a bit of legwork, you can use Windows as an administrator. It's much, much safer.
I've run IE6 rather well under Wine, though it often requires some work to get up and running. If it is an issue of the browser requiring activeX or some other stupidity perhaps you could run IE under wine to get things up and running?
If your trucker friend has metallic paint on his cab, that may be causing the reception problems. Either way, I would look for a wifi card that supports connecting to an external antenna so he can use an antenna mounted outside of his cab.
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Q: What do you call a hundred dirty hippies in the back of a cattle truck?
A: A deadhead load.
Hamachi, available at http://www.hamachi.cc/ or
OpenVPN, available at http://openvpn.net/
use DropMyRights to lower IE to a LIMITED account privlidges.
Get it from Microsoft Here
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
When most people think of trucker songs, they think of the ones recorded by Red Sovine. Dale Watson has a few good ones too. Here are a couple:
Truckin' ManIf I was a Truckin' Man, I'd be a gearjammer with a one-armed tan,
I'd spend my nights in the roadhouse, Days on the lost highway,
Hey, If I was a Truckin' Man, I'd have my radio screamin' on the A.M. band
All night drivin' by dashboard lights, If I was a Truckin' Man
I can't let my life slip away,
pushing these Number 2 pencils every day
This rat race don't fit into my plan, no, ma'am
I'm a'dreamin', schemin', If I was a Trucking Man,
(Chorus)
Well I'd sign my life away on the dotted white line,
Drinkin' my coffee, Smokin' my smokes all night
And if I get tired, I'll let Vinnie drive, if he can,
I'm a'dreamin', schemin', If I was a Trucking Man,
This one is kinda funny:
Truckin' QueenIf you ever get up to Oklahoma City
You'll here about a guy that thinks he's pretty
On channel 19 in year your ears
He's a long haul trucker, he's big and brawny
You can hear that sucker nearly every morning
Loud and proud, loud and clear
I got my night gown on
I got my pretty red panties on
and I'm ready to go in a minute
Trucking queen from OKC
He wears a negligee with red lame
He's always heard, but he's seldom seen
He's a trucking queen from OKC
He's got a string of white pearls around his big red neck
Scruffy beard and the hair on his back makes the negligee stick out kinda lumpy like
He ain't got no hair on the top of his head
But he's got a pony tail with a blue barrette
He wears pink lipstick
It gets smeared on his power mike
(Chorus)
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
If Windows is installed natively on the computer, you can run one of the freely-available Linux VMs in VMWare Player. They even have a Linux setup solely for browsing.
So if IE under WINE/Codeweavers doesn't work with the signon for some reason, then VMWare would be my next resort.
What about other options, such as cellular internet? Its cheaper nowadays, and is as simple as plugging in a pcmcia card. With this you can use it nearly anywhere, any time, at broadband speed... and youre not sharing the pipe with the other truckers. We all know what its like at a LAN party when one guy sucks all the available internet bandwidth for porn.... well if we had our own connection we wouldnt have to fear :)
As others have noted, Flying J's service definitely doesn't require Windows or IE. It's also gotten better; I used to have a lot of trouble logging in with anything other than IE, actually, and luckily still had it on the OS X partition of my iBook's drive (which itself I luckily still had at that point ;)).
However, the big problem was actually reaching the login page itself; that login / signup page was reached by automatic redirection when you tried to attach to the wireless network. That is, you'd start your browser (IE, especially) and would after a minute or so, instead of whatever home page you would get on an open network, see the login screen instead. This had an address something like https://highpeedl/ogin/tonservices.com, and from that page you could sign up (or sign in), pay for more time, etc.
After that step was done, you could connect to any program which needed the connection -- it was just the establishment that was a pain. So I could use Mozilla, after connecting through IE.
I found that by bookmarking the actual login page address in Mozilla though, the problem went away: though automatic redirection didn't work under Mozilla (so you couldn't reach that login page by trying to hit google, say), by going straight to the login page, all was fine.
However, like I said, that was then. Now, I've had no problem with automatic redirection or logging in with an iBook running Ubuntu linux (it's an old iBook, and the original Airport works just fine with Ubuntu), and the biggest problem is that the coverage footprint at Flying Js is often poor.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5