The Hidden Dangers of Public Wi-Fi: A Cautionary Fictional Story

How often do you use Public Wi-Fi?
How often do your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, children, parents, or relatives use Public Wi-Fi?
By using Public Wi-Fi, it is just a matter of time before someone takes advantage of you.
Or, even if you take measures to avoid hacks while using Wi-Fi connections, like using a VPN, it is just a matter of time before someone close to you gets into a troublesome situation, which may also affect you.
We are not trying to scare people. Our aim is to educate people in digital safety and security to avoid hackers and scammers taking advantage due to a lack of knowledge, awareness, or experience.
Please, have a look at this video and let us know what you think about the risks of using public Wi-Fi and the consequences of, sooner or later, getting hacked.

Does it really happen? How can public Wi-Fi be Hacked?

You may be wondering how the hacker could hack the coffee shop's Wi-Fi.
Well, he used a Wi-Fi Pineapple.

What is Wi-Fi Pineapple?
A Wi-Fi Pineapple is a type of network penetration testing and hacking tool used by cybersecurity professionals and sometimes malicious actors to demonstrate security vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi networks
In the hands of a hacker, a WiFi Pineapple can be used for the following purposes:

• Evil Twin Attack: The device creates a fake network with the same name (SSID) as a legitimate one, enticing devices to connect.
• Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attack: Once connected to the rogue AP, the attacker can intercept and manipulate network traffic passing between the victim's device and the internet. This can include capturing login credentials, sensitive data, or injecting malicious content into web pages.
• Deauthentication Attack: The Pineapple can send de-authentication packets to disconnect devices from legitimate networks, forcing them to reconnect to the rogue AP.

If you are interested in learning more, have a look at this article. But our short summary should have already given you a good overall idea:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/wifi-pineapple-protect/
And, if you are thinking... this is hacker stuff that most probably only hackers can get... well, you could go shopping and get yourself one (for educational and ethical purposes only):
https://shop.hak5.org/

 
How long does it take to hack Public Wi-Fi?

And if you are thinking... well, hacking into a public Wi-Fi must take quite a bit of time and effort... today is a good day to learn that it actually is easier than expected.
An extract from the articles that can be found by clicking on the link below:
'Santander challenged 86-year-old Alec Daniels from Hampshire to write and send a mock phishing email and hack into a public Wi-Fi hotspot as part of a campaign to raise consumer awareness of how to avoid scams.
He was able to do so in less than 17 minutes using information and guides easily available online – with the help of network security expert Marcus Dempsey.
Alec is a graduate of Santander’s ‘scam avoidance school’, which trains the over-60s in techniques to avoid being tricked by scammers and is available in all 806 of the bank’s branches across the UK.
It took Alec 13 minutes – with little input from the expert – to write an email claiming to be from fictitious company MoneySpark and asking recipients for their bank account information alongside a fraudulent link.'
https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/watch-man-aged-86-easily-hack-into-public-wi-fi/
 

If you have to use non-trusted Wi-Fi connections, what can you do?

We all have to use Public Wi-Fi connections at some point or another.

• You may be on a trip and you have exhausted your data plan.
• You may be at some friend's house, who you don't know that well and you don't fully trust that they take digital safety and security seriously.

Well, in such cases you better use a trusted VPN provider to keep your digital devices protected from undesired intrusions.
If it helps, if you are not sure what a VPN is or how to choose a VPN, let us suggest this post that we have written about the topic.
https://cryptosafetyfirst.com/vpn/
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Congratulations on completing this 5-minute digital safety power-up.
We hope this short article has helped increase your digital safety knowledge and awareness, and the 5 minutes read was worth the time.

Better safe than sorry. Please, let us know what you think about using public Wi-Fi connections.
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Article originally published at Publish0x