It doesn’t matter whether it’s at home, in the office, public cafe’ hotspots, when Wi-Fi goes out, all hell breaks loose. Although mobile data has become more competitive allowing for more flexible and affordable unlimited plans by many of the major cell phone companies like T-mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.
The convenience of coming home, and having your devices automatically join the network. Connecting you with your smart TVs, home theater systems, Bluetooth speakers, thermostats, and all other devices on your network.
Allowing for more functional integration of your devices with the Internet or the Internet of Things as Google calls it is paramount and almost unthinkable.
Unfortunately, the price you’re paying for the convenience of connecting your devices wirelessly come with both security and privacy vulnerabilities.
Take a look at your phone and look at nearby Wi-Fi access points near your home, what do you see 90% all have similar names.
The Service Set Identifier (SSID) or better know as “What’s your Wi-Fi?”. Unfortunately, your SSID believes or not provides an entry into your home just as the physical doors and windows offer an entry into your home.
My Wi-Fi router has a password, [Lord Jesus, help them] yes and it sucks!
Let’s have a look, with even the simplest of software tools like WiFi Analyzer can display vital information to an attacker about your Wi-Fi’s network topology.
information that can be used to target you with various vulnerabilities and exploits. SSID, MAC Address, Wireless Encryption, Channel Number, Wi-Fi Frequency, device Manufacturer.
To the untrained, this information is like another language but to train it is all the information needed to start probing and attacking your network until eventually access is gained.
Most routers come with default login credentials and hardly ever anyone takes the time to change them to something of their choosing and more secure.
Here are two popular websites Portforward.com, and Routerpasswords.com are just two websites where your default credentials can be located, and there are hundreds of other sources on the internet.
OMG, this is serious. Yes, it is!
So, your wireless access router has some useful features that help secure your connection, but unfortunately as mentioned before because of the technology itself and how your information is wirelessly transmitted over the air.
There have been many vulnerabilities and exploits discovered that allow for unauthorized access to your network.
Most recently a serious weakness was identified by Mathy Vanhoef, a security researcher in WPA2, a type of encryption that is used to secure all modern protected Wi-Fi networks.
WPA2 works by providing unique encryption keys for each wireless device that connects to it. Think of encryption as a secret code that can only be deciphered if you have the correct “key,” a vital technology that helps keep digital data away from intruders and identity thieves.
The vulnerability, called “KRACKs” (Key Reinstallation AttaCKs), is a group of multiple vulnerabilities that when successfully exploited, could allow attackers to intercept and steal data transmitted across the Wi-Fi network.
Any digital personal information that is transmitted over the Internet or stored on your connected devices — such as your driver’s license number, Social Security number, credit card numbers, and more — are vulnerable.
All personal information can be used to commit identity theft, such as accessing your bank or investment accounts without your knowledge.
In some instances, attackers could also have the ability to manipulate web pages, turning them into fake websites to collect your information or to install malware on your devices.
The weaknesses are in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in individual products or implementations. Therefore, any correct implementation of WPA2 is likely affected.
Unfortunately, to prevent such attack, users must update their routers and access points as soon as security updates become available from each respective manufacturer.
Note that if your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected. Researchers discovered that Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and others, are all affected by some variant of the Key Reinstallation Attack. Meaning variations of that same attack can be used to gain unauthorized access to your network. This points out how vital it is to keeping your device’s software up to date can be.
Users can fully protect them self by disabling Wi-Fi all together but good luck with that as it’s not very practical. Instead, you can make it a bit harder for attackers. Keeping your device’s software up to date, hide your SSID by telling your router or access point to stop broadcasting the SSID of your network, disabling WPS, a feature that essentially allows connecting your device to the network by just the pressing of a button on your access point. WPS presents another entry point. A WPS pin generator can be used to generate and automatically try every possible combination until the correct one is found and allow access to your network.
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