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Is public WiFi actually dangerous? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago by milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee to c/cybersecurity@sh.itjust.works

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I came across a Reddit thread about someone using a neighbour's WiFi, and the (unknown) neighbour later changed the ssid to the user's gaming handle.

Lots of comments saying that public WiFi can be a trap, and a malicious actor can see all your packets, sniff your passwords, spoof login pages.... And not one refuting it with SSL.

Am I missing something?! Is a WiFi/LAN actually that dangerous? I thought pretty much every site and service uses SSL these days, and signed certificates so (unless you have a particular Lenovo or Dell model) DNS spoofing won't work.

And aren't most ports on your own computer closed by default now? Unless you've opened ssh or a samba share with a poor password or something?

I realise packets can still be sniffed, website use can be tracked (but not the data, not things like passwords). With more work, that could be correlated to, for instance, what time a user logs on to a discord server.

Have I missed something big? Is someone else's WiFi or LAN actually dangerous?

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[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago

Using public WiFi can be dangerous. I still use the hotel wifi when traveling though.

But if I’m doing anything important I’ll turn on my vpn for extra protection because you do not know who is snooping on your data.

A lot of data being transmitted is encrypted but the person in the middle could still see which sites you are accessing, just not the content.

There are some attacks that can downgrade your connection so the stuff is not encrypted, but I don’t think that is very likely to happen due to other safety mechanisms.

In addition to this, even someone collects your encrypted internet traffic, they can’t see what the data is. But once quantum computers are accessible, they can easily break the encryption and look at everything.

I don’t believe quantum resistant encryption is currently being used for https connections.

Another thing that could do is make sites take you to an imposter site. So google.com could take you to a clone of that site and try to get you to log in and reveal your password and email address.