Public Wifi Especially Risky In Airports And Hotels

Most of unsafe open Wi-Fi networks can be found in airports and hotels. There is the chance that you log in to a hotspot of a malicious greatest. That's Janne Pirttilahti, Director of Product Management Next Gen Security at F-Secure, said Tuesday.

Pirttilahti demonstrated during Wifi Now in Amsterdam how easy it is to create a fake hotspot and people in the area to let the network use with the aim to steal private information from them.

Hotels And Airports

Hotels and airports are the easiest locations to set up fake hotspots around because there are a lot of businessmen or people who have to spend money, says Pirttilahti talking. "There are interesting targets, while falls in those locations do not like someone pops open a laptop with antennas. Sometimes it can even from a hotel room. But in a coffee shop is much faster suspicious."

Research by F-Secure among UK consumers also shows that many consumers are well aware of the risks they run if they use public Wi-Fi networks. A whopping 52 percent of consumers surveyed avoid using public Wi-Fi networks because they are afraid that their personal information into the hands of hackers.

VPN Connection

59 percent says open Wi-Fi networks not to use it because they are afraid of viruses or malware. Still, says nearly one in every three month to use at least once and sometimes daily public wifi networks. The advice is to at public Wi-Fi networks in any event using a VPN connection.

CERT / CC Warns Cookie Vulnerability In Browsers

One problem with the way placed HTTP cookies can ensure that attackers can circumvent HTTPS and can steal private information, warns the CERT Coordination Center (CERT / CC) at Carnegie Mellon University. The problem is in all major browsers.

The problem is that the standard for cookies specifies no mechanism for separation and integrity and browsers do not always authenticate the domain settings of a cookie. An attacker could use this to set a cookie that is used later for an HTTPS connection, instead of the cookie from the website. An attacker can therefore a cookie for example.com locations on the computer that the actual cookie for www.example.com overwrites the victim loads HTTPS content. By another vulnerability used in the server use the cookie to the attacker to obtain private information.

The investigators who have the problem during the last USENIX Security Symposium discussed state that a cookie a so-called "secure flag" may contain, indicating that it has to be sent only over a HTTPS connection. However, there is no corresponding flag that indicates how the cookie is placed. An attacker could via a man-in-the-middle thus inject cookies used on subsequent HTTPS connections. According to the CERT / CC are there attempts to secure cookie management undertaken but all failed due to a lack of a widely implemented standard.

As a solution, the organization that the standard must be adjusted for cookies. In the meantime, the researchers advise websites HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) for a top-level domain to set up and use the "includeSubDomains" option.This partly avoids the possibility of an attacker to place top-level cookies cookies for a subdomain, such as www.domeinnaam.tld override. End users are advised to use the latest browser version. In particular IE users make wise here. Internet Explorer 11 is the only IE version that supports HSTS.