{"id":27218,"date":"2016-12-08T13:05:32","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T05:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=27218"},"modified":"2016-12-08T13:05:32","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T05:05:32","slug":"one-four-wi-fi-hotspots-just-waiting-hacked-says-kaspersky-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2016\/12\/08\/one-four-wi-fi-hotspots-just-waiting-hacked-says-kaspersky-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"One in four Wi-Fi hotspots just waiting to be hacked, says Kaspersky Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"

After <\/span>analyzing<\/span><\/a> information on more than 31 million Wi-Fi hotspots around the world, Kaspersky Lab has found that every fourth (28%) is unsecured and poses a risk to users’ personal data. That means all the traffic transmitted over those networks, including personal messages, passwords and documents, can be easily intercepted and used by attackers.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Kaspersky<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Kaspersky Security Network<\/span>, 25% of the world\u2019s Wi-Fi networks have no encryption or password protection of any kind. In other words, the information they transmit is completely open and can be read by third parties. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another 3% of hotspots use WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) to encrypt data. This unreliable protocol can be “cracked” within minutes using tools that are freely available on the Internet. <\/span><\/p>\n

The rest of the nearly three-quarters of Wi-Fi hotspots use a more reliable form of encryption based on the family of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) protocols.<\/p>\n

The effort required to hack these networks depends on the settings, including the strength of the password. For instance, if it\u2019s a weak or publicly accessible password (e.g., on display in a cafe), a criminal will also be able to decrypt any transmitted traffic.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that the top 20 countries with the highest percentage of non-encrypted Wi-Fi hotspots includes many popular tourist destinations \u2013 Thailand, France, Israel, the US and so on. Travelers are among the most vulnerable because the nearest available Wi-Fi hotspot is often the only way for them to stay connected.<\/p>\n

At the same time, another study<\/a> suggests only 57% of Internet users are concerned about their data being intercepted during a Wi-Fi session.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe advise all users to remain vigilant when connecting to Wi-Fi. Don\u2019t use hotspots without passwords and don\u2019t use public hotspots to perform high-risk activities such as online banking or shopping, logging on to sites or for transferring confidential information. If that sort of traffic is intercepted by a third party, it could result in serious losses, including financial losses. And of course, we strongly recommend using additional measures to protect traffic, such as VPN (Virtual Private Network)<\/span> technology,\u201d explains Denis Legezo, antivirus expert at Kaspersky Lab.<\/p>\n

Solutions for this include\u00a0Kaspersky Internet Security<\/span><\/a> and Kaspersky Total Security<\/a>, which now integrate the new Secure Connection feature that encrypts all data sent and received over a communication channel. D<\/span>epending on the user settings, Secure Connection can be run automatically when attempting to connect to an unsecured network, or when performing potentially vulnerable operations online.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After analyzing information on more than 31 million Wi-Fi hotspots around the world, Kaspersky Lab has found that every fourth (28%) is unsecured and poses a risk to users’ personal data. That means all the traffic transmitted over those networks, including personal messages, passwords, documents and much more, can be easily intercepted and used by attackers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":27219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[4959,1481,117,54],"class_list":["post-27218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-cyberhacking","tag-cybersecurity","tag-kaspersky-lab","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}