Last year, Wi-Fi security company & Wi-Fi NOW sponsor F-Secure set up a fake Wi-Fi hotspot in London, U.K to test consumers willingness to do anything to get on the Internet. After 2 hours 250 people had connected to the fake hotspot and 32 MB of data were collected. Some even agreed to give away their first-born child.
Cybersecurity firm Skycure says the two of the most common methods for lifting bank account details, logons, and passwords from data streams are SSL decryption and SSL ‘stripping’. In general, cybercrime attacks can be categorised into man-in-the-middle, sniffing, and of course malware that can extract practically anything from your device.
And the extent of the threat may be surprising to some. According to research by www.hidemyass.com, nearly two thirds (59%) of Britons regularly use unsecure Wi-Fi hotspots, with one in five (20%) doing so weekly or more to bank online (19%) shop (25%), send emails and documents (31%), and use social media platforms (50%). – see more here.
We’ve dedicated an entire day of Wi-Fi NOW to Wi-Fi security. We believe we need to address this issue now – to make sure that public Wi-Fi everywhere for everyone can happen safely & securely.
At one of my previous Wi-Fi conferences, an Orange (France Telecom) executive kicked off his presentation with a picture of the Twin Towers attack. It’s possibly a good picture of how worried carriers are about Wi-Fi security. But how serious is the problem of public Wi-Fi security? The short answer is very serious.
Carriers are leaning towards carrier-grade security solutions that include Hotspot 2.0 encryption and authentication. This is all well and good – provided that Hotspot 2.0 public Wi-Fi networks are actually around. Thus far, the rollout of Hotspot 2.0 has been fairly slow outside of a few early adopters like Boingo Wireless & Time Warner Cable in the US. ‘
The big problem of course is that many common venues – like retailers, fast-food chains, or even hotels – don’t typically know much about securing guest Wi-Fi. Venue Wi-Fi is so easy to set up and get to work without any security protection of any kind, and so venues will typically just do that. Consumers likely need to be aware that unless their hotspot service is being delivered by a carrier they trust, then it’s likely to be insecure. So they need to protect their devices themselves.
At Wi-Fi NOW we’ve reserved an entire day for delving into the Wi-Fi security issue. Make sure don’t miss this – go to our event page and check it out now. Here’s the link.
Watch the Great Wi-Fi security experiment in London:
Watch Wall Street Journal coverage of the most malicious Wi-Fi hotspots for travellers:
