It worries me, believe me. But I've been using the signal for five years and so far nothing too bad has happened, just some browser redirections and Youtube hijacks (knock wood).I would probably not worry about the risk from Mirai as much as I would worry about the risks from using unencrypted wifi
What is a cnc interface code and how is it stored?my guess is - yes a puppy PC could be infected especially if it was online quite a bit, and also if it used a savefile that would retain the cnc interface code across boots.
Figures.there is probably nothing you can do at present.
Yes, hijacking IoT devices is a nasty trick. But it was bound to happen.Mirai doesn't seem to go looking for the data on your machine - it seems to hijack a machine just to piggyback off it's internet connection and cause havoc to someone else via a DDos attack.
The solutions for me are not good and all are expensive. Plus, like I said, the usual Internet connections here are just as bad as the unencrypted wifi signal, maybe worse in some ways (like banner and popup ads from the ISP, and even worse abuse). Satellite is the best solution here, and a friend in my building has it. But it costs a fortune.In my opinion an insecure wifi connection would be by far the weakest part of that chain.
True. It's certainly nowhere near as secure as my Verizon fiber optic+router in New York. Not secure at all, really. Highly dangerous, even. But life is dangerous. However, I don't think any of my financial institutions would accept a large transaction from the website. Heck, I even have trouble using my debit cards <grin>. And just the fact that my computer, and this unencrypted wifi signal, are in Argentina is some sort of security, because no one trusts anything coming from this country.But that wifi signal is still running through a router - even though it is not your router it is still a router. The fact that it's brand, model, and ownership is unknown to you does put your data at risk.
A rather frightening thought, for sure. And with the U.S. Gov hacking the whole world through ISPs (PRISM, etc.), there's no way to be secure. I mean, do you trust all the employees of the NSA who have access to everything not to use the data to steal?I know people who maintain the Southern Cross internet data cable that runs from New Zealand to the U.S via Hawaii and based on their comments I am sure every data packet is transparent to a number of individuals and agencies along the way.
Thanks. I wouldn't know how to look.I will post back if I can find it but it can be hard to find information sometimes. Have to get the keywords right.
Yes, there are a number of options. I was in the middle of working through them not long ago, when there was some tragedy and I got sidetracked. I seem to recall that the best idea appeared to be to password-protect the pendrive partition where the changesfile is kept. And really the only changes I am making now are to bookmarks as I have Carolite pretty well configured the way I want it. Some times I just copy the new bookmarks to a text file and do a no-save at shutdown. That's probably the safest procedure of all. But I'm going to password-protect the 2nd, vfat partition on the pendrive and maybe keep the whole .mozilla folder there.If you wanted greater safety you could always temporarily hide the savefile and run without it, or even make another new one that you could use only for banking sessions (ie only containing the minimal changes required to get online quickly).
Yes, I am looking into shinobar's portables.Maybe you could look at using "portable" versions of your preferred browser.
I presently do not save any browser history, cookies, or cache when I exit Firefox, which I do frequently during the day to renew the IP address. And only bookmarks are saved when I shut down the computer. But, as you say, a separate browser for sensitive transactions would be best. Maybe even a separate pendrive with a virgen Carolite and a more secure browser than Firefox, which has become too bulky and complicated to be made secure.you could even have two setups - one browser used solely for banking sessions (with tighter security settings, minimal bookmarks and no browser history or cookies) and another browser setup for general internet surfing and bookmark/cookie retention.
Sad but true. That unencrypted wifi signal is a grave danger. I have no way of even knowing if I'm being hacked. Terrible.you don't have access to the router anyway. If your Puppy was infected with Mirai all you might see is more network icon activity.
Thanks for that URL.I quite like the Sophos "Naked Security" website for that sort of info:
Cheers.
Mike7