Every house hold and every company has Wi-Fi setup. If you drive through and check Wi-Fi you will catch a lot of (Wi-Fi) network, does anyone secure their Wi-Fi, More over any company care to check if their firmware is vulnerable to Wi-Fi attack? Alarmingly the answer is NO.
What found is. — All these will make sense when I explain more in future posts
- No one changes their default SSID — Which gives out Wi-Fi modem maker information.
- Almost all setup admin password is default to what Wi-Fi modem provider defaults are!
- Alarming number of Wi-Fi routers are vulnerable to attack — Means someone with basic open-source tool can crack your Wi-Fi, some Wi-Fi router are still using WPA which can be cracked within minutes.
WI-FI is one of the most insecure ways to a network, It requires a lot of work and knowing your surroundings and threats to secure it, The Wi-Fi makers/Standards provider had done lot to improvements to Wi-Fi security. In a well-maintained security focused companies at a minimum will have firewall behind WI-FI traffic, Isolated Wi-Fi networks from main network, centralized login like radius and captive portals to keep it somewhat “secure”.
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Will explain in the future post how a Wi-Fi can be hacked and how an attacker use the hacked Wi-Fi to compromise your data/privacy and system. Maybe someone finds it helpful!
Home User Perspective
To understand why securing Wi-Fi is important we must first understand
1. what’s the motive of the person to hack into your Wi-Fi?
2. what’s the impact if that actually happens?
Let go with a simple motive “FREE INTERNET”
For a general well-understood example would be free internet, one hacks into the Wi-Fi to get free internet. So, that’s a motive for this act.
So let’s assume she got into your Wi-Fi and is using Wi-Fi as she pleases. You Awesome high speed expensive internet which she didn’t pay for.
Impact:
What if she downloads some pirated movie, or she goes to website which is illegal according to law of our country. And got flagged by the law agency?
What ISP sees (Your dummy gatekeeper)
ISP like BSNL naturally should keep details regarding Broadband account and Public IP assigned to the broadband account, and few other details. They will not know that your Wi-Fi is hacked. For them, its all you.
Who will be liable how will you prove you didn’t do this illegal act?
Problems:
Wi-Fi modem is where the illegal access details would be stored, Most modem have limited logging space usually cleared on reboots of Wi-Fi router, so no proof of someone accessed your modem. More so in case of home inexpensive Wi-Fi router.
Even if you have details of illegal access — usually modem store DHCP lease, mac address and device name, And routing information on ARP table. There is no guarantee that evil hacker to use DHCP server they can use manual IP if IP range is known usually be 192.168.1.0/24, Mac address can be spoofed to look like some other device EG a TV or Mobile NIC, Same for device name it can also be changed easily, ARP table/Logs gets flushed on reboots or on a regular interval according to manufacture specification. So, there is no sure means of proving someone else did it.
If the crime committed is severe forensics can find out what have happened that require specific tools and help of law. It not that you’re doomed. There are ways. But not available to you or normal citizens to prove your innocence. Will get into few forensic method when I start explain the attack vector and defense.
Technical knowledge required is beginner level for this sort of attack