Thursday, March 21, 2013

Don’t trust public Wi-Fi & cyber cafes


I always tell people never to log on to free WiFi hot-spots at the park or at Starbucks... Why you say?   Cause I might just be watching your internet session.  Just be lucky its me, cause I don't have malintent of your Internet surfing.  Other  people on the other hand, might have other motives.

There is this Firefox extension that I have used, called firesheep, that grabs password and logs in information of all the people connected to the same WiFi network. Basically I can see what you you see on your laptop ex. Facebook session.   Firesheep is not the only tool that can use brute force your privacy; there are many network sniffing tools such as Wireshark that can intercept your communication.

I was able to view someone buying pottery on overstock.  With that person's log in session cached in, I could have easily bought some stuff and changed the shipping address to my friends house;  Or I could have updated her Facebook status letting her know that she got hacked  (but I'm a good guy).

If you do need to connect to a public WIFI for what ever reason... please protect your self...install a third party software that can protect your self such as HotSpot Shield http://www.hotspotshield.com. This software protects your entire web surfing session by securing your connection, whether you're at home or in public.  
If you have a smartphone, its probably better to use your smartphone's WiFi hotspot and /or use the 4G connection to get internet access.

Stay Alert while using a free WiFi network, you never know what adware, malware, key-logger,iframe injection and viruses the network is infected with that can cause you trouble or get you in trouble. 
Happy Surfing. 

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