The dangerous cost of FREE WiFi!
By Prempal Singh
Wi-Fi has become an important part of our everyday life and it is no different in business. Everyone wants to be linked anywhere and everything the time, and if it is free then all the better.
With the growth of “free WiFi,” we are opening a box of digital problems. We definitely have the blinders on because in most people’s terminology, free = safe!
Almost everywhere we go, cafes, fast food restaurants, shopping department stores, terminals, you can now get absolutely WiFi. If perhaps you are traveling then you can certainly stay connected, because it is free.
The problem with free WiFi is that bad guy are aware of it is available and have ways of compromising those systems and compromising you.
There are a number of strike systems that are available from the internet free of charge or for minimal cost that can create huge problems for all users of totally free Wi-Fi.
The role of penetration assessment is to get inside your network. Only 15% of organizations incorporate some level of protection that examines traffic within the network. Most are still focused on the restrictions.
Like the bad folks, we use any and all known attack methods. We have used free WiFi as a method!
Using Secure Wi-Fi/Wireless Network
That is where real work comes into it, for the attacker that is. In 95% of the attack, we have to raise those credentials to administrator level. Once done, we have use of the whole system.
It just takes time.
Time is something there is a lot of. Most business organizations have very little.
Additionally, the ‘hacker’ has a non-commercial area, a community that will help them achieve their goal, they are hacking to learn and they learn far more that most users will at any time understand.
That is the big difference with how they use the digital world.
Their peers and comrades are just like them and they are easily available to help.
If perhaps you feel that this will never happen to me personally copy and paste “WiFi pinup” into your search engine and show the pages and pages of results for the term. Now only for fun, spend 10 minutes watching the first video.
A 50 dollars piece of equipment, 2 scripts from git center some time and persistence and anyone can take your credentials.
Now, do you believe we certainly have a problem?
This is merely one of the attack vectors. They are many! That they are varied! There are more dangerous types of attacks available to harmful guys.
Pretty frightening, no!
I recommend that you treat free WiFi with the similar attitude we reserve for poisonous dogs.
Super carefully!