Ask Slashdot: How Do You Best Protect Client Files From Wireless Hacking?

dryriver writes: A client has given you confidential digital files containing a design for a not-yet-public consumer product. You need to work on those files on a Windows 10 PC that has a wireless chipset built into it. What can you do, assuming that you have to work under Windows 10, that would make 3rd party wireless access to this PC difficult or impossible? I can imagine that under a more transparent, open-source, power-user OS like Linux, it would be a piece of cake to kill all wireless access completely and reliably even if the system contains wireless hardware. But what about a I-like-to-phone-home-sometimes, non open-source OS like Windows 10 that is nowhere near as open and transparent? Is there a good strategy for making outside wireless access to a Windows 10 machine difficult or impossible?

Comments

Don't use wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

First post

Bios settings

[smylie]

Most (all excluding Apple?) laptops wil allow you to turn off / disable the wireless chipset in the bios. Many also have a physical kill switch on the side of the case.

Barring some wikileaks sort of tomfoolery from the CIA, this should stop any network access (assuming you also don't plug in a network cable).

Re:Two options immediately suggest themselves:

[jonwil]

Shielding the WiFi antenna (or the whole device) is the only way to be sure its secure.

You cant trust any software solutions or any hardware on-off switches installed by the manufacturer.

Re:Two options immediately suggest themselves:

[bughunter]

You cant trust any software solutions or any hardware on-off switches installed by the manufacturer.

Especially if today's Wikileaks dump is true.