We are all tempted to use a public WiFi network when available and, personally, I always try to find it when I go to bars, restaurants and hotels, so that I can surf for free, which saves me on the data volume of my subscription and which should definitely be faster than a 3G network. Unfortunately, however, surfing and entering passwords and personal data on a website, being connected on a public wifi network, can be dangerous .
A hacker, even not too good, could be lurking ready to steal information, data and passwords from all those who connect to that network, up to stealing the online identity of these people.
Who is curious about how this is possible, we discover here some of the most effective hacking techniques to steal data on public wifi networks .
Obviously I am not able here to explain how you actually spy on conversations and data that pass in a wifi network.
The important thing that must be clear is that however anyone, with a little computer skills and a desire to study, can use these techniques on his PC thanks to the suite of tools included in Kali Linux.
READ INSTEAD: How to surf safely on public wifi, free or unsecured
Attack 1: Man-in-the-middle (MITM)
The type of attack called Man-in-the-middle (MITM) is one in which a third party enters the line of communication between two parties and intercepts the transmitted data.
A typical example of Man in the Middle is that which involves hijacking a user's connection to show him, instead of the site he is trying to use (for example Facebook or the bank's site), an identical one, but created specifically to deceive .
A very used and simple type of Man In The Middle attack is DNS Spoofing, the one to change the names of websites, so that, for example, by opening google.it you end up instead on a whole other website.
Anyone who uses public Wi-Fi is particularly vulnerable to an MITM attack since the information transmitted is generally clear and easily captured.
Keep in mind that for a hacker it is enough to have access to the e-mail box to be able to access username, password, private messages, and any other private info.
If you want to test MITM attacks, refer to the article on LAN / Wifi network security verification simulating hacker attacks
Against this type of attacks you can not help but always check which site we are writing the password or other private information and make sure that it is always an HTTPS site, with an SSL certificate TSL not expired or invalid.
Activating the mode that always opens only HTTPS sites helps defend against this type of attack.
Attack 2: Connection to a fake Wi-Fi network
This is a more subtle variation of a MITM attack, also known as an "Evil Twin" attack.
The technique involves the creation of an access point that captures every data is transmitted.
Difficult to notice, if you are using a free public wifi network, if it intercepts any data in transit, however it is, as it is easy to set up this trick, it is also easy to defend yourself.
If the site you access is HTTPS, the data sent to it is encrypted and protected even for those who want to try to intercept it, as seen in the point above.
For greater security, however, always better, when you want to use a public wifi network, ask if it works to the staff of the restaurant or to those who manage it.
Attack 3: Packet Sniffing
This funny name indicates the simplest method of stealing information that passes through a network.
This technique can also be experimented at home, easily within any LAN, even non-Wifi, as shown in the article on how to capture packets and spy on traffic on wifi networks, using free programs such as Wireshark.
Among other things, sniffing packets on the network is not even illegal for a wifi manager, which would be enough to show a warning to users, before logging in, about the possibility of monitoring the network before logging in.
Again, no information passing through HTTPS sites can be viewed in the clear from Packet Sniffing.
Attack 4: Sidejacking ( Session Hijacking or cookie hijacking )
Sidejacking is based on the collection of information through packet sniffing.
In this case, however, the hacker manages to store the data so that he can subsequently study and decrypt it if possible.
The hacker exploits existing vulnerabilities on the security certificate (and on the cookie sent by the server) and therefore manages to hijack the session and gain access to all private accounts.
A capable cybercriminal will be able to infect the PC of those who connect to Wifi via malware and even if they cannot read the password entered in an HTTPS protected site, they can capture a whole series of private data up to accessing every website that the victim connected to.
In the past, when Facebook didn't have HTTPS, you could easily hijack the session via Session Hijacking and hack a Facebook account.
In this case there is talk of a technique that can also become very powerful if used by a capable person, fortunately, however, there are few such good people around, so even in this case the important thing is to be careful to connect to a HTTPS site.
To improve personal security, it is worthwhile however, when connected to a public network, to surf behind a VPN.
READ ALSO: Password theft on the internet: the 5 most used techniques
