Protected means armed: what is dangerous about Wi-Fi?

On warm summer days, an increasing number of people prefer to work in the fresh air, rather than in stuffy corporate offices. Anyone who can afford this kind of luxury, always connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi, all the more - there are more and more access points every day, and today they are present in almost every major city. However, any security software developer will say with confidence that there is no secure street access to the Internet! The Wi-Fi architecture cannot boast of special security, and the encryption and access control algorithms used in it have a very weak cryptographic strength and can be easily cracked.


The leading engineer of the ESET virus laboratory, Pierre-Marc Bureau (Pierre-Marc Bureau), believes that one of the worst threats should be considered the so-called man-in-the-middle attack: “An attacker can be connected to the same network able to constantly monitor your connection and substitute Internet pages, waiting for the moment when you yourself hand over your personal data to it. ”

There are several major security threats that arise when using free Wi-Fi access points:
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- the ability to intercept your personal data that you enter to access certain servers, payment systems or bank terminals. Networks configured by hackers can impersonate completely legitimate free access points.
- Attack of a computer connected to this access point by unknown malware that is not present in the database of virus signatures
- sniffing - interception and analysis of your Internet traffic by hackers - may lead to loss of confidential data
- data theft by the “man in the center” method (man in the middle)

Such an attack can be prevented by following a few simple rules:

- If possible, use VPN technology to access the Internet. It is desirable that you can access the network through a VPN tunnel deployed within your corporate network.
- use only secure protocols such as HTTPS and POP3s to access email
- refuse to transfer confidential or personal data using protocols that are not protected by strong encryption algorithms
- do not use Internet banking through public Wi-Fi networks
- make sure that you have configured the firewall and antivirus software to block incoming traffic, update the virus signature databases and enable the advanced heuristic analysis mode.