People using wireless high-speed net (wi-fi) are being warned about fake hotspots, or access points. The latest threat, nicknamed evil twins, pose as real hotspots but are actually unauthorised base stations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once logged onto an Evil Twin, sensitive data can be intercepted.<\/p>\n
“Users need to be wary of using their wi-fi enabled laptops or other portable devices in order to conduct financial transactions or anything that is of a sensitive or personal nature,” said Professor Brian Collins, head of information systems at Cranfield University. “Users can also protect themselves by ensuring that their wi-fi device has its security measures activated,” he added.<\/p>\n
BT Openzone, which operates a vast proportion of public hotspots in the UK, told the BBC News website that it made every effort to make its wi-fi secure.<\/p>\n
“This means that users’ personal information and data, logon usernames and passwords are protected and secure,” said Mr Clark.<\/p>\n
In the vast majority of cases, base stations straight out of the box from the manufacturers are automatically set up with the least secure mode possible, said Dr Nobles.<\/p>\n
Cybercriminals who try to glean personal information using the scam, jam connections to a legitimate base station by sending a stronger signal near to the wireless client. “Cybercriminals don’t have to be that clever to carry out such an attack,” said Dr Phil Nobles, a wireless net and cybercrime expert at Cranfield. “Because wireless networks are based on radio signals they can be easily detected by unauthorised users tuning into the same frequency.”<\/p>\n
Although wi-fi is increasing in popularity as more people want to use high-speed net on the move, there have been fears over how secure it is.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/technology\/4190607.stm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-warnings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4845,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions\/4845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}