Protection from packet sniffing on an unencrypted wireless network.

[Order]

I routinely browse on a wireless network at a local cafe. They don't have any type of security set up and I know that any and all traffic to and from my laptop can be intercepted by a sniffer. How do I make my traffic either invisible or encrypted?

 

[DougLite]

You can create a VPN tunnel that is encrypted, or you can use IPSec to a server at home with encrypted payloads. Both will require a static server to tunnel into then send the requests back out, and will be very slow. Unfortunately, if the providers of your access point do not want to provide security, you don't have many other options.

 

[Order]

Damn.
I installed this thing for them and I asked over and over if they wanted some type of encryption on it and they kept saying "no, we don't want anything complicated and we don't want to deal with giving out passwords". I have full access to the router (a WRT54G running Sveasoft Alchemy 7a)...is there a way that access to it would be advantageous for me so I can circumvent the whole server thing?

 

[LoStMaTt]

At least change the admin password on it...at least.

 

[Order]

Yeah, I did that.
I'm just paranoid about the packet sniffing.
Is there a way to detect a packet sniffer with another packet sniffer?

 

[DougLite]

Depends on the sophistication of the h4x0r. If he's running merely a promiscuous packet sniffer, that's read only and that activity can't be detected. If he is changing packets or creating new ones, such activity can be detected, but yo uare looking at using sophisticated monitoring tools and a lot of auditing and intervention on your part to find any out of the ordinary activity.