If you have never heard about it, the whole trend of eavesdropping on wireless connections (”sniffing”) is picking up… especially at airports. With all of the layovers and delayed flights, wireless Internet can be a godsend. Then again, it could be your worst nightmare, especially if you connect to an “artificial” access point, which is created by users for sniffing purposes.

WLAN hot spots are popular. You can pass the time waiting at airports or train stations working off your backlog of emails. For some time, man-in-the-middle attacks via ad-hoc mode have been making the rounds at US airports, according to Computerworld, which advises users to shut off the ad-hoc mode in the WLAN settings under Windows. But now that attackers are pretending to be access points, that is not enough protection: they can configure a WLAN PC card as an unencrypted soft AP and name their bait something like “Free WiFi”. They then use your notebook’s integrated WLAN adapter to connect to a real hot spot and clear the connection via the soft AP by means of Internet Connection Sharing. They can even do so using a single WLAN card.[more]

Tags: Wireless Security