Taking advantage of the ubiquitous wifi hotspots you find when you’re shopping, traveling, or just going out for a cup of coffee is perfectly natural. It’s practical and convenient, which is the point of such technology. However, public wifi hotspots are probably the riskiest digital environment you can find. Evil twin attacks are one of the factors that make them so dangerous, so it’s a good idea to learn what they are and how you can protect yourself.
Evil twin attacks: What are they?
Imagine that a hacker in a public wifi network sets up a wifi fake access point that mimics an authentic one near it. That’s an evil twin attack. As the users connect to the phony node, all their traffic goes through a computer in the hacker’s hands, so he becomes privy to everything the user does online.
Hackers don’t need many resources to develop an evil twin. Even a smartphone will do the trick as long as it has the right software in it. Evil twin attacks are most frequent in public wifi hotspots.
The mechanics of an evil twin attack
So let’s initiate you in the arcane arts of evil twin attacks. Here is how they work:
Finding the right spot
The attacker starts by finding a good place to set up the shop. This would be a busy place, popular, and with known public wifi access. So airports, , libraries, and coffee houses fit the bill. Even better, from the hacker’s point of view, these places often offer multiple nodes with the same name, making the evil twin’s existence even harder to detect.
