Re: Internet cafe with SSH

[Jonathan Q <jq@example.com>]

David Santinoli (u235@example.com) wrote:

>   I'll be spending a week in Tokyo starting from Sep 5. I'd like to ask if
> anyone knows an Internet cafe (or similar public access point) in Tokyo offering
> advanced tools such as a SSH client.

I haven't been to an Internet cafe in at least 2 years but at the time
they were all running Win9x or MacOS, so there's nothing to stop
you from bringing  ttssh.exe or some other FTP tool on a floppy or
FTPing it and installing it.

For that matter, even if they are running Win2K now, you still can do it
for anything that doesn't require administrator authority to install.

That is, of course, why I wouldn't use an Internet cafe machine to
access any host that would pose a problem if it were cracked.
You might be encrypting your session, but there's nothing to stop
a blackhat from going to an Internet cafe and putting in a piece
of software that logs keystrokes and sends interesting traffic
somewhere else or just records it on the localhost for later
retrieval.

Why I don't consider this likely, it's both possible and
trivial to do.  I've installed software on Internet cafe PCs
when they didn't have something I wanted (Netscape, in a case
where they all had IE) and no one is watching what you do.
Of course, if anyone is watching, it's probably via software and
everything you do is already being logged by the cafe.  I doubt
that just as much, but again, there's nothing to stop them.

At least SSH protects you from anyone running a sniffer on
the network (probably more likely than a keyboard logger
on the localhost), but it doesn't make you completely safe.

It may be safe enough for your needs, though, depending 
on the risk involved if your password does get sniffed.

Jonathan