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"Free Wi-Fi" Scam In the Wild
DeadlyBattleRobot writes in with a story from Computerworld about a rather simple scam that has been observed in the wild in several US airports. Bad guys set up a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network and name it "Free Wi-Fi." You join it and, if you have file sharing enabled, your computer becomes a zombie. The perp has set up Internet sharing so you actually get the connectivity you expected, and you are none the wiser. Of course no one reading this would fall for such an elementary con. The article gives detailed instructions on how to make sure your computer doesn't connect automatically to any offered network, and how to tell if an access point is really an ad hoc network (it's harder on Vista).
Well, they would have a really difficult time turning my linux based portable into a zombie. I guess that would be risk free wifi for me, Yeah! Oh, and while in public, I use stunnel to a secure server. Sniff all of the data you want while I use your free wireless.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
To avoid this, just avoid ad-hoc connections. That will work until the perps start using Infrastructure (Access Point) connections with a bridge to the real one. You can even set up Windows XP so that it won't allow you to make ad-hoc connections.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Now I can take a well-configured Linux lappy to the airport, hook up through these bad guys, and make extra sure to do everything illegal, immoral, and dangerous I can think of over their pipe without a smidgen of guilt. Woo and yay!
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When you connect to a network, a little wizard pops up asking you if it's "Home", "Work", or "Public Location". Choose Public Location and sharing will be disabled automatically.
Or the bad guy could set a relay with the real internet and get all your passwords, that's why I use SSL in public APs. But even worse, he could emulate (and forward data to) popular sites like Gmail, Yahoo, Ebay and Paypal but without any SSL. Like, a site that looks and acts like Gmail and even has your messages but is in reality a non-encrypted site that acts as a proxy.
Connecting to the "Free Wi-Fi" and having your passwords and data sniffed is one thing, but how easy is it for the attacker to turn a Windows XP system into a zombie, merely by connecting to an attacker's wireless network?
Assumption #1. You run Windows XP, SP2, up to date with security patches
Assumption #2. You have Windows Firewall installed and configured for maximum security
Assumption #3. You are not sharing your folders on the network, or if you are, you're not allowing guest write access
(Now, I know how many Windows users do not follow #1,#2,#3 above..) but assuming they do, is a zero-day exploit required in order to zombify their PC?
Doesn't running Windows already turn your computer into a zombie?
eg. if I ssh to my home computer, or use access an https site am I still ok?
As long as you exchange keys with the actual end host, and not the man-in-the-middle, you're fine.
If the Man-in-the-middle tries to give you his own SSL key, your browser will throw up an error message that the key is invalid. If you click "accept key", then you're hosed and the attacker can read all your traffic.
As far as ssh goes, if you've connected to the host before, SSH will (or at least on the clients I've used) throw up a big warning message that someone is trying to hack you. If you haven't connected, no such warning will appear and if you type in your password the attacker will get your password, and everything you type in your ssh session.
AccountKiller
Help other folks out. Set yourself up as a proxy, advertise yourself as "Free Wi-Fi" too, and let everyone else (at least, everyone who connects through you) safely use the scumbag's paid wi-fi connection for free.
But if you must have some innocent fun, you really should have your machine mirror images so that they're returned upside-down. Not all of them, just a very few that meet some criteria based on a hash of the user's MAC address or something. Imagine their confusion when their buddy's laptop shows the picture normally and they're sitting there thinking, "What the...!!?"
Personally, I'd try to gather evidence and report it to the police if I felt they'd do anything worthwhile. The fact that this person's behaviour happens to be driving people towards my OSs of choice is purely incidental. You probably realise this, and I doubt that you were serious about thanking the guy, but I bet that your f****d up zealotry, morality and ideology are genuine; you really would place a microscopic (and questionable) "blow" against Microsoft over thieving scum like this escaping justice. You really think that MS-enabled crime (let alone this particular scam) is the only crime they're going to commit?
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With Linux and the hostap driver I can set up a legitimate access point. Ad hoc isn't a necessary part of this scam, and I don't see how avoiding ad hoc networks will prevent anything.
Besides the possible risk from malware infection if you have enabled file sharing, this really is the same man-in-the-middle attack that was so prominant in the 80's and early 90's. A problem which has been mostly fixed by the adoption of SSH over telnet. And is practically non-existant over HTTP today beacuse of the use of SSL on servers. And with regards to malware, how does this differ from picking up some spyware from the pr0n site you "accidently" visited?
I see no problem here that cannot be solved by adopting the same principles that you would use for ordinary domestic internet access:
1) Turn on your firewall and close all open ports.
2) Don't send sensitive data over an unsecured network.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
The network isn't the problem here, your computer's configuration is. All of my machines can safely connect to an untrusted network (and they do---my non-firewalled, non-NATted internet feed) without being turned into zombies.
The message here shouldn't be "don't connect to untrusted networks," it should be "secure your machine."
Once you do that, these guys are just being nice and giving you a free connection!
-rsw
How sure are you that you can prove that you're not involved, especially when you've been arrested and subject to police questioning? Under ideal circumstances If you were in control of things, you could probably put together a good case, but fancy playing against a prosecutor and police who genuinely believe that you were involved and want to make you look bad?
And (so the police will want to know) since you obviously knew this guy was up to no good, why didn't you report it?
Doesn't sound such a good idea now.
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Situation's a bit different in Europe. The airports in Budapest and Vienna have free wi-fi, and it's blazingly fast. In fact, when I recently had to fly out from Vienna, I got to the airport 36 hours early so I could get several films through Bittorrent.
It's that kind of juvenile behavior that kills off free wi-fi services. They are there for people to check itineraries, keep in touch with their friends/family/colleagues, and other minor conveniences. They don't exist for jackasses to park on for days to download movies.
"Free to use" does not mean "Free to abuse". If you want more bandwidth, pay for it yourself.
This still doesn't explain about the zombification process. First of all, most file sharing is read only unless you have a password used, most home users don't really do much filesharing, but generally it's a read only thing, but second of all even if you have your entire folders mounted as read/write, how exactly does that allow this machine to turn you into a zombie? Last I heard writing files to your my documents folder (it's really difficult to share other folders than this) can not actually execute code.
I guess if your entire hard drive was shared, there is a possibility that they could write the file to a startup directory on it that automatically launches it on your next reboot . . .
This article really read as a lot of FUD to me. Possibly unpatched machines are affected, but they give a solution of disconnecting from the net. I just don't get it, the solution, it appears to me would be to oh, I don't know, patch your computer and use sane practices (like not sharing your whole hard drive as read/write/execute (apparently) with anonymous access).
Now the problem of them being able to steal credit card numbers and such is an issue. This is an issue that effects all OSes, so everyone should think bout it. however, if you check that the ssl keys you accept are valid for the site in question, then you should be alright. While they can perform a man-in-the-middle attack, that does require changing what keys a website uses (or possibly disabling encryption). As far as aim passwords and such go, well if you don't use it for important stuff, what are they going to do with it?
I read this entire article and really just want to read something from someone who knows anything about security, and not some idiot who read about something like this and proposes an even more idiotic solution. There is truth that you must be careful connecting to any wireless network that you don't know, also your machine needs to be patched etc. a little common sense goes a long way in this matter.
Phil
Aside from the jackass component, how about the idiocy? Personally, I'd much rather pay for a few dvds than sit in an airport for 36 hours to get them "free".
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