Cybersecurity

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Is public WiFi actually dangerous? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/cybersecurity

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But even then, theoretically, even if not default, could you not just block the first request to HTTPS site causing fallback to HTTP and then redirect elsewhere for the purpose of nice lock icon?

[–] taladar 4 points 1 week ago

If you have a HTTP fallback on HTTPS failure that might work, but only if the site doesn't use HSTS and this is the first request on that client. I skipped over HSTS preloading in my earlier explanation which also addresses this issue for sites on the browsers list at least.