Public wi-fi are made available in public places such as malls, coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, and airports and gives people usually customers access to the internet for free. A lot of people are used to using public hotspots and connect to them almost automatically as soon as they are in range. Using these can be harmless when reading articles or surfing the web but in cases where one needs to input sensitive information to access some services such as logging in to read emails or to access bank details and even social media accounts, this could be very risky because of the fact that it is done on a public connection where a lot of people have access to it and who can tell even people with bad intentions. Some of the possible things that can happen in the case of a security breach over a public wi-fi are described below:
Man-in-the-middle attack
Man-in-the-middle attack describes an attack whereby the communications between two people that is supposed to be private is intercepted and in some cases manipulated by a third party or an attacker. The attacker can also alter the data as soon as it is intercepted and provide false information as feedback from the person being communicated with. It is easy to get attacked over a public wifi because the transmitted data are not encrypted. This leaves your data unprotected and attackers can have access to your passwords, confidential messages and many more and even your banking details just by getting access to your email.
Sniffing
Attackers can get sophisticated software and devices that can allow them to acquire information over the wireless communication and analyze it. This method gives access to attackers to know all activities performed over the network to the extent of login credentials and sensitive information filled in web forms and login pages. The method is described as eavesdropping on the wifi network. An attacker can also hijack your session and access victim’s accounts by analyzing the cookies sent by a page in response to a log-in attempt. This can be used to wreck a lot of havoc.
Distribution of Malware
Attackers can also find a way of exploiting the vulnerabilities in devices used over a public wifi by distributing malware without the victim’s knowledge. Having a lot of users on the same network assists the attacker in widespread distribution of malwares over devices of unsuspecting victims. The vulnerabilities can be described as weaknesses or loopholes in the design of devices used to access the internet.
Set up for Denial of Service attack (DOS)
Connections on a public wifi can be breached and the exploitation of vulnerabilities can used to set up botnet of devices used in a denial of service attack or a distributed denial of service attack on a target. Denial of service attack is a form of attack used by an attacker who tries to make it impossible for authorized users of a particular device or network resource to use it tentatively. It is performed by sending massive amounts of requests to the victim device or network resource much more than it can handle such that it becomes overloaded and disrupts its functioning.
