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Is it safe to connect to a public Wi-Fi hotspot?

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Is it safe to connect to a public Wi-Fi hotspot?

Enjoy going for a drink at your local coffee store whilst getting some work done or browsing the web? With more and more cafes, bars and libraries these days resembling public workspaces and free Wi-Fi feeling like an essential part of daily life, it is very easy to go to a local café and feel at home.

But are public Wi-fi hotspots really safe places to browse the Internet or do we have to be on high alert anytime we’re online in a public place?

Let’s have a look at some of the dangers one faces when connecting to a public network:

Page Spoofing

 It’s easy to take for granted that a venue’s network actually belongs to that specific venue.

How many times have you sat down at a cafe and connected to the venue’s network at the click of a button? It’s this simplicity that hackers take advantage of when creating a malicious access point.

It’s very easy for an attacker to create a fake page that looks very much like the real thing. For example, when you sign up to the network you may be redirected to a Facebook sign in page. This could potentially be a fake, and entering your details would send them straight to the cyber attacker.

Luckily there are small indicators that can help us, on most occasions, to know if a page is definitely a fake.

Facebook for example, encrypts all data sent to its pages by connecting its users via SSL.

If any page that typically connects through SSL doesn’t show a padlock next to the page address it’s best not to give personal details!

Sniffing Apps

In an open network it is very easy for an attacker to capture the data traffic sent from your device. In fact, there are free easy to use apps, called “sniffing apps”, dedicated to this very purpose.

Although the common WPA2 routers do encrypt connections, these apps are capable of sniffing out the PSK (password). If an attacker does this they can then decrypt all traffic connected from a device to the network.

These risks have actually led police in Derbyshire in the UK to release a statement this month on the growing dangers of cyber crime:

“The UK now has more than 300,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots, which means more people than ever before are potential targets for cyber criminals, simply because they don’t know how secure the networks they’re using are.”

Third-Party Data Gathering

Sadly, even when you’re connected to a venue’s actual network you have no guarantee of privacy. In fact, venues often use their public Wi-fi hotspots to gather information about consumers.

Though third-party data gathering isn’t likely to end up with your passwords or your identity being stolen, your personal details are often being taken without your consent.

Whilst most venues directly ask a customer for an email address or number in order to access their Wi-fi, some go the extra mile of injecting cookies into your device’s network in order to track your browser history, typically resulting in an onslaught of targeted ads.

A great way to protect yourself against these attacks as well as against sniffing apps is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service. This will ensure that all data traffic from your device is encrypted, whether the page you’re visiting is secure or not.

Another step that can be taken is to use a personal mobile broadband dongle, which, though slower, can be used in public spaces and is less likely to be compromised.

The best bet always, however, is simply to avoid sharing personal information, especially bank details, when on a public network. Stick to that principal rule and you should be ok.

Happy browsing!

The post Is it safe to connect to a public Wi-Fi hotspot? appeared first on Panda Security Mediacenter.

Panda Security

Struggling with your Panda security subscription renewal?

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How to renew your Panda antivirus subscription?

Renew your Panda Antivirus it’s easier than you think. Here’s how to do it.

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You can renew your subscription in three ways:

1.Go to Panda Security’s website.

On the homepage, go to “My Account” ➡ “Product Renewal”. To access your Renewals area you’ll have to enter your email address and customer ID. You can find your customer ID in the welcome email that you received after purchasing your product.

If you can’t find your customer ID, don’t worry. There are other ways to renew your subscription:

2.Open your antivirus, go to “My Products” and click the Renew option.

Alternatively,

3.Renew your subscription from the renewal notices

Renew your subscription from the renewal notices you will receive at your mailbox or from the pop-up messages displayed by your antivirus.

Once in your personal area, select the protection whose subscription you want to renew. You will receive an email with a new activation code. Then, enter the new activation code in “My Products” ➡ “I have an activation code”. The next time you open your antivirus your protection will have been extended.

Follow these simple steps to remain protected!

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Top 5 things you are revealing to the world when downloading torrents

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Top 5 things you are revealing to the world when downloading torrents

Downloading torrents is certainly not as popular as it used to be but people still do it. The fact you may be able to watch a movie free of charge before it is even available in your town’s movie theatre may sound appealing, we wanted to highlight that this is illegal and your actions will have consequences.
In this blog post we are not going to focus on the consequences, we are sure you already know what happens to the bad guys. We want to stress on the type of information you are sharing with the world while downloading torrents;

Username and Password

Very often torrent websites require you to create a profile before you are able to download a torrent. Therefore you are forced to come up with a username and password. Having in mind people don’t enjoy using multiple passwords some folks end up literally giving their username and password without a fight. Imagine what hackers who crack software for fun could do with your personal information. It feels like getting a wolf pack to guard your sheep.

IP Address

You are sharing your IP address with both seeders and leechers. Almost every torrent client has the option to see details about the peers you are connecting with. Sharing your personal IP address with complete strangers is not the safest thing. Not all peers are there to help you, hackers masked as seeders/leechers are lurking around harvesting IP addresses.

ISP – Internet Service Providers

Your ISP knows what you are doing. Even though it is NOT in their interest, sometimes they are forced to share information with the law enforcement. Your ISP provider will not hesitate to share information about you when pressured by the authorities. After all torrents can be heavy and ISP providers are certainly not very happy when they see you abusing the unlimited data stream they offer you.

Traffic Information

Getting to download an actual torrent is not an easy task. You have to go through a whole bunch of shady websites so you can get to the point where you will download the torrent you want. There are a whole lot of ‘download’ buttons that download everything else to your device but the desired torrent. Even if the content you want to download may not be illegal, you share all your traffic information with the website admins. Remember what we discussed about the wolf packs.

Social Media channels

Torrent websites sometimes offer you perks when following them on social media. This immediately gives an idea to everyone interested about the type of people that support those websites. Even if you are not downloading or distributing any illegal content, engaging with them on social media channels and being active on torrent forums may drag you towards a group of people you don’t want to be in.
Peer to peer file sharing is not always illegal but you have to keep in mind that very often cheap things end up being expensive. You should be fully aware about what you exposing to the world on your journey to the next episode of the Big Bang Theory.

If you are in store you don’t just go and grab a DVD and walk out, you pay for it. The reason why you don’t steal is not only because you are a good person but also because you are afraid that your action may ruin your life. Nowadays, being on internet is similar to walking on the street or in the store, your actions are being monitored – let’s make sure you don’t embarrass yourself before the whole world.

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Yahoo Data Breach: Top 5 things you should do immediately

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Yahoo’s biggest nightmare was confirmed yesterday – back in late 2014, a copy of certain user account information has been stolen from Yahoo’s network. The story started developing in early August when a hacker named “Peace” was openly trying to sell personal information of more than 500 million Yahoo account users on the dark web.

According to Yahoo, the account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

Even though the breach happened two years ago it is not too late to take action, especially if you haven’t changed your password in a while.

Top 5 things you should do immediately

Change your password now!

It is as simple as that. Change not only your Yahoo password on your Yahoo account, but also review all your online accounts on which you’ve used the same or similar information. The sooner you do it, the better!

Turn on the two-step authentication that Yahoo offers.

Two-step verification uses both your password and an extra security code to verify your identity whenever you sign in to your account. If someone else tries to access your account, even if they can guess your password, they still won’t be able to get in without using two-step verification.

Pick better passwords.

We cannot stress more on the fact that using the same passwords for many accounts is not recommended. As you remember Yahoo are not the only one who’ve had similar issues. Back in 2014 eBay asked 145 million of their users to change passwords after a data breach. Changing your passwords often must be a habit!

Update your security questions immediately.

Yahoo says about 1 billion people globally engage with one of its properties each month. The chances your password is in the wrong hands are not minimal and the risk is real. Take action and don’t wait anymore, time is key here.

Go through old emails and remove sensitive content.

If your Yahoo account information is indeed for sale on the dark web, someone can hack into your email at any minute. There is tons of document scans, tax returns, credit card details and invoices that may be laying around your inbox. All these documents contain information you want to keep for yourself.

Remain vigilant! After Yahoo admitted the data breach you may be approached by fraudsters pretending to be someone they are not. It is important for you to not engage with online fee-based, toll-free-number services. Even though the incident happened nearly 2 years ago and you may be off the hook, we advise you to remain cautious and spend some time making sure you are fully protected.

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Worldwide “Crysis” Through Remote Desktop Protocol

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Tales from Ransomwhere Two weeks ago we saw a ransomware attack in a server belonging to a French company. It was a Crysis variant, a ransomware family that appeared earlier this year. We witness thousands of infection attempts by ransomware on a daily basis, but this one caught our attention as the file somehow showed up in the computer when no one was supposed to be using it and in fact, there were no email clients or Internet browsers running there.

How did it get into the computer?

Why did the security measures in place allow this file into the server? That’s what we wanted to find out, and so we began an investigation. It turns out that this server is running Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and these cybercriminals used a brute force attack until they could guess the credentials to obtain remote access.

Back to the story—as most users do not have 2FA enabled and the passwords are not that complex nor random, it is pretty easy to get into a server using this kind of brute-force attack, a good dictionary or with the most common combinations. This is not a new technique. More than a year ago, I remember one wave that hit Spanish companies with ransomware using the exact same technique. Cybercriminals usually perform these attacks at night or during weekends, when there are few people in the office, or none at all.

Cybercriminals get into a server using this kind of brute force attack, a good dictionary or with the most common combinations. 

In this case, the attack to the server started on May 16th, where they performed 700 login attempts. These were performed automatically, usually for a period of two hours approximately. Most of these attacks have been happening from 1am to 3am, or from 3am to 5am. Each and every day. The number of login attempts changes, for example on May 18th there were 1,976 while on July 1st there were 1,342.

After almost four months and more than 100,000 login attempts, the attackers were finally able to get into the server and drop the Crysis ransomware.

This is a Worldwide Crysis

This week our colleagues from Trend Micro published an article that warned us about similar attacks happening in Australia and New Zealand that deploy Crysis variants. Unfortunately, we can say that those are not the only countries—this is happening at a worldwide level (at least since May).

Assuming you need to have RDP running and connected to the Internet, apart from monitoring connection attempts so you can learn that you are under attack, you should also enforce complex passwords. The best approach would be to implement 2FA, such as SMS passcode, so guessing passwords becomes useless.

We’ll continue to keep you informed with our Tales from Ransomwhere series!

 

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