Beware the Wi-Fi hotspot “evil twin.”
It’s the latest technology scare, unleashed on the world this week by cyber crime expert Dr Phil Nobles of Cranfield University. Cranfield University is in the United Kingdom.
Nobles warned that techno-savvy crooks could easily set up Wi-Fi hotspots at Starbuck’s and trendy cyber cafes. According to Nobles, the bogus, evil twin hot-spots could overpower the real Wi-Fi offering and fool users into logging on, where they might then carry out transactions revealing logon information and credit card numbers.
Nobles didn’t mention truckstop Wi-Fi, but if he’s right about the threat, it surely applies here too.
“Evil Twin hotspots present a hidden danger. Users think they’ve logged onto a wireless hotspot connection when in fact they’ve been tricked to connect to the attacker’s unauthorized base station,” Nobles said.
According to Professor Brian Collins, also of Cranfield University, the only way to protect yourself against evil twins is to avoid conducting any financial transactions or transmitting sensitive data over a Wi-Fi hotspot.
While the experts described how it could be done, they offered no examples of actual evil twin scams.