Freeware February: SSH Tunnel Manager
Today’s pick is more a public service announcement.
Anyone who ever uses their computer on a public wireless network,
like a T-Mobile Hotspot, for example, needs to download and configure
SSH Tunnel Manager NOW.
If you think your email, chat or browser traffic is safe from prying eyes when you’re on a public wi-fi network, think
again. Your usernames, passwords, email messages - even chat transcripts - are freely available to anyone who knows how
to intercept them (and believe me, it’s not all that difficult), in real time and in clear, unscrambled text. Scary,
eh? What’s scarier is that people who SHOULD know better, are leaving themselves vulnerable every day.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a screenshot of some POP3 email traffic taken in the Press Lounge at
Macworld last month. [The person who initiated this eavesdropping session
did so specifically to prove this point. Nothing nefarious was done with the information and all logs were
destroyed.]
My freeware pick today doesn’t make your whites whiter or your brights brighter. It isn’t sexy, it’s very serious
and it won’t make your Mac do tricks. What it does do is keep your personal information safe(r). That makes this
freeware priceless.
Douglas Bowman at Stopdesign has an excellent tutorial for setting up
SSH Tunnel Manager 2.0b3 and a more
in-depth look at other things you can do to secure
your wireless data transmissions.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Aaron Jacobs said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
Another solution, which is much more seamless if your mail server supports it, is to just turn on SSL support in your mail client's preferences. Make sure to turn it on for both incoming and outgoing mail!
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Alberto Garc?Raboso said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
I myself use SSH tunnels to connect to my email server. I used SSH Tunnel Manager some time ago, but later on discovered SSHKeychain.
SSHKeychain not only allows you to set up tunnels automatically, but also works for passwordless SSH logins to other machines. It has less options than SSH Tunnel Manager for configuring your tunnels, but if you just need the basics, SSHKeychain just works. And it can be run in the menubar as an NSStatusItem.
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Kevin Ballard said 4:15PM on 6-16-2005
I agree with Alberto - SSHKeychain is better. I used to use SSH keys that had no passphrase for passwordless connections, but that's obviously insecure if anybody can ever get access to my computer for even a short time, since they could copy my keys off. Once I got SSHKeychain, I switched to using a complicated passphrase and using SSHKeychain to store that in my keychain. Now my keys are secure and I still get the same passwordless connections. Plus, the tunnel managing aspect of SSHKeychain is extremely nice.
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