What does it matter if your HTTPS?

[ollarney]

About robert changs paranoia, isn't it safe to connect to banking website through open wifi? I mean the connection is encrypited through HTTPS.

beyond that people can sniff, your packets on any wifi network that you connect to. Even a wired network.

How safe is 128-bit HTTPS encryption? from what i hear it would take centuries to crack with modern hardware.

[computoman]

I suggest you might go back and watch the last several episodes of hak5 and then see if you then still feel the same way.

[masterq]

DO NOT DO IT!

HTTPS uses public/private key encryption. Basically, when you connect to a https web site, your computer and the web site each establish a public key and exchange them. One side uses the other side's public key to encrypt the data and then passes it through where the private key is used to decrypt the data. Anyone looking in on the data passing through can't see a thing this way.

HOWEVER, proxies are a man-in-the-middle, so they are able to change the data passing through. At the point when your computer and the website exchange public keys, they both pass through the proxy. The proxy can save these keys and give each side a different public key for which the proxy has the private key. Then, when data is passed through the proxy, the proxy decrypts the data using its private key, reads it, re-encrypts it using the real public key, and sends it through like nothing happened.

Not safe at all...

How safe is 128-bit HTTPS encryption? from what i hear it would take centuries to crack with modern hardware.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/30/hackers-playstation-3-make-ssl-much-less-secure/

[nav13eh]

I suggest you might go back and watch the last several episodes of hak5 and then see if you then still feel the same way.

Do exactly as he says. I have watched those episodes and it seams to me that you a completely wrong.

[tehboris]

Also see SSLStrip (http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/).