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Although I am not sure whether this has been seen in the wild yet, there are some security experts in the UK who are going to demonstrate a security exploit for WiFi networks called the "Evil Twin" at an educational seminar in London. The essence of the Evil Twin attack is that you go into (for example) a Starbucks and you want to make your WiFi connection so you can surf the Internet. Little do you know, someone is sitting outside in a car with a different access point designed to jam the signal of the T-Mobile access point and instead replace the signal with its own. As part of the scam, a login screen matching that of the normal provider would appear on your Pocket PC or notebook. You would use your legitimate login/password to get into the system and access the Internet - but what you may not know, is that the page is set up to relay your information back to the criminal along with other personal data and information. 'Professor Brian Collins, head of Cranfield's Information Systems Department, said the dangers will only increase as hot spots become more common. However, like other wireless security experts, he said users can mitigate most problems simply by turning security measures on. Most wireless laptops ship with security deactivated.
The popularity of Intel Corp.'s Centrino chip for wireless laptops has played a big part in popularizing Wi-Fi, according to industry observers. Intel this week introduced a new Centrino with additional wireless security features, including built-in support for Cisco-compatible extensions for WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access).'
Not sure how the average every day WiFi user would know whether they are logging in to a correct base station or not...
I imagine this has been going on since the beginning of WiFi, it was very obvious. There's a simple solution though, make a ID that's very hard to mimic and put your base station ID number on the wall. Another one would be for coffeeshops to monitor and detect things like this.
I cannot find the link right now, but it seems to me I remember reading about this over a year ago. I forgot all about it, and have not seen any reports of it out in the wild until this particular eWeek article.
There are probably some very easy user methods that can be used to bypass as well. For instance, just off the top of my head, it might be worthwhile every time you are logging into a public access point that you type in a wrong password the first time. If it lets you through anyway, something fishy is going on.
What would be even worse, is if you log on and it all looks okay, and you sign up for an account (Which is really signing up through the hacker's laptop) And then he pops you onto the regular WiFi. Byebye credit card.
What would be even worse, is if you log on and it all looks okay, and you sign up for an account (Which is really signing up through the hacker's laptop) And then he pops you onto the regular WiFi. Byebye credit card.
That is probably the idea behind the scam. Get new as well as existing hot spot customers...grab their credit cards...and go shopping. Pretty lame huh?
What would be even worse, is if you log on and it all looks okay, and you sign up for an account (Which is really signing up through the hacker's laptop) And then he pops you onto the regular WiFi. Byebye credit card.
That is probably the idea behind the scam. Get new as well as existing hot spot customers...grab their credit cards...and go shopping. Pretty lame huh?
And you do all this while sitting next to them. They'll proabably get a little freaked out when you keep uncontrollably grinning at them as you buy stuff though
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