Some of you may ever get notice “there’s an attack on your wifi network” from your router like Mcafee wifi under attack message.
How could this have happened? Try to read this article!
There are several types of WiFi under attack that hackers use to eavesdrop on wireless network connections for passwords and banking credentials as well as malware.
Also read: Best Mobile WiFi Hotspot for International Travel
The main types of WiFi attacks, below.
Visitors of hotels or coffee shops are often connected to the free WiFi on offer.
Such customers often choose a WiFi access point based on the SSID without monitoring whether the wireless network is set up by a particular company for the customer to use.
Criminals can easily help WiFi access points and can also use the name of the place in the SSID.
An SSID called ‘Free Airport WiFi’ will be sufficient to keep multiple people connected.
Customers can still access the internet when they connect to this rogue WiFi network, so it’s less likely to notice that something weird is happening.
However, everything they do online will be monitored by cybercriminals once connected to that network.
Address information entered online, such as card numbers or banking credentials, can be stolen.
How is this done? Simple! The hacker only creates a hotspot on a smartphone and pairs it with a tablet or laptop.
The hacker can then sit at the coffee shop drinking a latte while everyone’s connected traffic.
Alternatively, they can use the router with the same name and password that it is currently using.
It may also have a stronger WiFi signal, which can get more people connected. Through the “evil twin” all traffic will be clearly visible to the attacker and all data sent over the network can be captured.
The fake access point and the evil twins are one of the most common wireless networks.
They are easy to do, require little technical expertise, and are very effective. One study shows more than a third of WiFi hotspot users are not careful when accessing WiFi hotspots and often connect to unsecured networks.
Research by Kaspersky Lab in 2016 showed more than a quarter of public Wi-Fi hotspots installed in malls were unsecured and lacked even basic security controls.
One mall in Las Vegas is known to operate 14 risky WiFi access points.
By using packet sniffers, Hackers can intercept traffic on unencrypted WiFi networks.
Packet sniffing is including in one of the most common wireless attacks.
This common wireless network attack is easy on legacy routers, such as those using WEP encryption.
WPA offers better security, and even better if you use WPA2. You may also choose new WPA3 encryption protocol if it is supported by your access point.
Technique that are used to identify and map vulnerable access points is called wardriving.
The attackers drive around the neighborhood and use laptops with GPS devices and so it is named wardriving.
This technique is effective, because many WiFi networks are used by businesses that exceed the limits of the buildings and the surveillance that is in place to maintain those networks.
Warshipping is a more efficient method of attacking a WiFi network because it allows attacks to be carried out remotely, even if the attacker is not within range of the WiFi network.
The tactic was mentioned by IBM X-Force Red researchers at Black Hat USA.
They use inexpensive (under $ 100) and readily available components to build a single-board computer with WiFi and 3G capability that runs on a cell phone battery.
This device can be used to connect locally to a WiFi network and send information back to the attacker via a 3G cellular connection.
MAC filtering is widely used to prevent certain devices from connecting to their WiFi network.
This is useful to prevent individuals from taking advantage of the free WiFi for customers. however, this method of blocking users can easily be bypassed.
Faking MAC addresses and bypassing these filtering controls is very easy indeed.
Here are the steps to prevent common wireless network attacks. Follow the steps to keep your wireless network secure.
Upgrade your router with WPA2 encryption if your router doesn’t have it yet.
WPA2 is the minimum standard for WiFi security, although it still can be cracked.
Don’t forget to make sure that WPS is turned off.
Your wireless router or access point can be accessed from outside your premises if it’s too powerful.
Choose a router that has an option for setting the strength of your signal. By that way, you can ensure no wifi thief can use your connection.
Ensure your login name and your passwords are secure because the administrator access can be abused.
If you left the default credentials unchanged, it will be no longer abused. Try to change the username from default username and set a strong password.
Wifi under attack? A web filtering can be one of solution. It suites to all WiFi networks and gives them the essential protection.
It will prevent users from malicious-detected visiting websites and web pages.
It can protect you from web-based threats such as drive by downloads, exploit kits and phishing.
It will also allow you to prevent your network from being used to download or view unacceptable content such as pornography and lets you control bandwidth usage to ensure all customers can enjoy decent Internet speeds.
If the access point is located in a physically accessible location, interference may occur.
It only takes a few seconds for the access point to return to its factory default settings.
Ensure that the access point is located in a safe location, such as a locked cabinet.
The first protocol used to encrypt wireless traffic is the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol.
WEP, as the name suggests, is meant to make a wireless network as secure as its wired counterpart, but it doesn’t make a WEP wireless network secure.
RC4 cypher is a secure basis of WEP. However, how does the RC4 being implemented in WEP become the problem.
WEP allows initialization vectors to be reused, and key reuse is not a good idea. That allows attackers to break encryption easily.
Several other vulnerabilities have been identified in WEP that make it far from safe.
Even though WEP has been depreciated and there are wireless encryption protocols that are much safer to use, many businesses continue to use WEP in the mistaken belief that it is secure.
WEP is not the only one options for encrypting the Wifi traffic, but it is more secure than no encryption at all.
WPA may be more secure than WEP, but not without its own wireless vulnerabilities.
Two Belgian researchers – Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens from the University of Leuven – identified serious flaws in the WPA security protocol.
The flaw is named KRACK, short for Key Reinstallation Attack.
This flaw can be exploited in a man-in-the-middle attack to steal sensitive data sent over a WPA encrypted WiFi connection.
If a WPA flaw is exploited, attackers can eavesdrop on traffic and obtain banking credentials, passwords, and credit card information.
The vulnerability lies in the four-way handshake. Encrypted WPA2 connections begin with a four-way handshake, but not all parts of the handshake are required.
In order to speed up reconnection, the third part is retransmitted.
The step where the 3rd part of the handshake can be repeated several times can be used in a wireless network attack.
To carry out a WiFi KRACK attack, the WiFi network must use WPA2-PSK or WPA-Enterprise and the attacker must be within range of the WiFi signal. Almost all routers currently in use are vulnerable to the KRACK WiFi attack.
The best defense is to keep the router up to date and for users to only connect to the wireless network using an up-to-date, paid VPN.
Specters are vulnerabilities affecting microprocessors that perform branch prediction.
Vulnerabilities can be exploited to allow attackers to access selected virtual memory locations and thus obtain sensitive data.
In order for the flaw to be exploited, the attacker must first convince the user to download and run malicious code or visit a website where JavaScript is run in the browser.
Those are some information for you to let you know why and how to take action if there’s an attack on your wifi connection.
I hope it can help you in solving such annoying problem.
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