[CALUG] asus wireless and secure yahoo email

[Bernard Karmilowicz]

Hi Walt:

> I want to be able to access a local open wifi by plugging the Asus 
> into my Fedora-12 box thru ethernet.
> Can this be done, and how

Not only should it be possible, it should be easy.

 From the perspective of your Asus WAP; The F12 box is treated no 
differently than any other DHCP server. The WAP can't tell the 
difference. So I'd:

      1. turn on the F12
      2. turn off the WAP
      3. disconnect the WAP's WAN and LAN cables
      4. connect the F12 to any of the WAP's LAN ports (it should now be 
the only box connected to the WAP)
      5. turn on the WAP
      6. configure the F12's NIC with a local address/mask
          (e.g. ifconfig eth1 192.169.2.1 netmask 255.255.0.0 broadcast 
192.168.255.255)
      7. point FF on the F12 to your WAP's default LAN address (192.168.1.1)
      8. via FF, configure the WAP to obtain its IP, netmask, broadcast, 
gateway, and, DNS server addresses via its WAN interface
      9. via FF, configure the WAP's LAN and wireless interfaces to taste
      10. configure the F12 to be a DHCP server for the WAP
      11. move the F12 cable from the WAP's LAN to WAN interface
      12. reboot the WAP

Upon completion of the above steps, the WAP should receive its logical 
configuration (per step 8 above) from the F12 over the WAN interface. If 
the F12 is your Internet gateway, then you must configure the F12 to 
route traffic between its two interfaces (ttyS3 if that is your 
dial-up/modem port, and eth1).



> should I try hooking the ethernet cable to WAN on Asus instead of LAN ?

Yes. Per the instructions above.



> When I do: https://mail.yahoo.com, the login appears to be "secure", 
> but the web mail switches to http://us.mc1200.mail.yahoo.com ( 
> meaning, it's not https ). Is this at least somewhat secure? Does 
> yahoo encode only the login ? does yahoo use javascript to scramble 
> the mail text ?

Run a sniffer (e.g. tcpdump) on the F12's eth1 when accessing the Yahoo 
server in question to view the traffic and determine whether it is 
encrypted or obfuscated to your satisfaction.


Good luck!   {:-)

- Bernie

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