{"id":8556,"date":"2016-09-22T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T07:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8556"},"modified":"2016-09-17T13:23:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T20:23:40","slug":"dangerous-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8556","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous Connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wi-Fi is everywhere, but not safe<\/em> everywhere. To help you accept that fact, Google can be quite aggressive when you attempt to connect to a bogus or insecure network. If you’re using the Chrome web browser, perhaps you’ve seen the message:
\n
\n

\"Figure

Figure 1. This is not the connection message I expected from the airport’s Wi-Fi.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Scary, right?<\/p>\n

I saw that message on my Android tablet at the Santa Barbara airport. Sure, it could have just been that someone forgot to renew a certificate. That happens. But it could also mean that the “free” airport Wi-Fi had been hijacked by some jerk who would use their alternative connection to pilfer passwords and other sensitive info.<\/p>\n

What bad could happen? Plenty!<\/p>\n

When the network is hijacked, all traffic diverts through a central location. A lot of information is transferred, especially in an airport where the network could have hundreds of connections. The problem isn’t a single guy watching everything, it’s that a sophisticated program scans all that data looking for key items.<\/p>\n

For example, in the hundreds of packets sent, the program may sniff out addresses for known banking institutions. Or it may simply look for the text “password” in a packet. The information is saved or logged for later exploitation.<\/p>\n

No matter how you encounter such a situation, the way you react is always the same: Don’t use the network.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If another network is available, connect to it instead. Use the mobile data network instead. Do anything else instead! You’d just be colossally stupid to continue on the insecure connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Take those web page warnings seriously!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,15],"class_list":["post-8556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-android","tag-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8566,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions\/8566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}