Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

decorrespondent.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 112 posts

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#81

Post by Quentangle »

k_bx wrote: post #79
Maxnuf wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the original Dutch article ( https://decorrespondent.nl/845/Dit-geef-je-allemaal-prijs-al... ) the author explained in the comments that they used SSLstrip for facebook and live.com So, the connection was over HTTP and not HTTPS. They added a padlock favicon.ico image to give the impression the site was secure

Ah. I wonder how hard would it be to extend protocol to let Facebook, for example, state that they will never go https again, so that browser would scream.

If you meant to say "never go http again", then the protocol for that already exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security

https://plus.google.com/+JoshuaBerg/posts/YrdsMzYzotr

https://hstspreload.appspot.com/

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#82

Post by DasIch »

k_bx wrote: post #79
Maxnuf wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the original Dutch article ( https://decorrespondent.nl/845/Dit-geef-je-allemaal-prijs-al... ) the author explained in the comments that they used SSLstrip for facebook and live.com So, the connection was over HTTP and not HTTPS. They added a padlock favicon.ico image to give the impression the site was secure

Ah. I wonder how hard would it be to extend protocol to let Facebook, for example, state that they will never go https again, so that browser would scream.

Isn't this exactly what HSTS is for?

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#83

Post by tiatia »

Don't like your MAC? get a new one...

import random

import os

mac=''

# os.system('/etc/init.d/networking stop')

os.system('ifconfig wlan1 down')

os.system('ifconfig eth1 down')

for i in range(0,3):

r=random.randint(16, 256)

mac=mac+":"+str(hex(r))[2:]

mac="00:07:E9"+mac

print mac

os.system('ifconfig wlan1 hw ether '+mac)

os.system('ifconfig eth1 hw ether '+mac)

os.system('ifconfig wlan1 up')

os.system('ifconfig eth1 up')

# os.system('/etc/init.d/networking stop')

os.system('/etc/init.d/networking start')

os.system('ifconfig')

print "echo 'MAC changed..."

print "new random MAC "+mac

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#84

Post by pornel »

jMyles wrote: post #48

Here's what I wrote last time this was posted ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8457167 ), with some edits to respond to other comments made in this thread: An interesting read, but sparse enough on details to be basically useless. Additionally, there's nothing that I can discern to be new here. The following is demonstrated, all of which are known (and in fact obvious) to people with even an elementary understa…

Good list. To that I'd add:

* DNS and TLS (SNI) don't hide domain names, so you can't hide the fact that you're using certain sites/apps, even if they're HTTPS-only.

* If the OS doesn't require NTP encryption, HSTS can be bypassed: https://www.blackhat.com/docs/eu-14/materials/eu-14-Selvi-By...

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#85

Post by adestefan »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #80
victorvation wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Whenever wifi is enabled, your device is sending out probe request frames, which includes your list of preferred networks/networks you've connected to before.

Could it be used as a sort of fingerprint to identify phones? I'm imagining using a scanner to create a list of phones in the area. You walk through the halls of congress to compile a list of devices. Do this every few days or over the course of a month, to eliminate visitors. Now that you have your fingerprint, you can leave a few scanners around where you're trying to track the congressmen. IE, if you want to black…

iOS 8 somewhat mitigates this through using random MAC addresses when scanning

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#86

Post by breakall »

adestefan wrote: post #85
MichaelApproved wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be used as a sort of fingerprint to identify phones? I'm imagining using a scanner to create a list of phones in the area. You walk through the halls of congress to compile a list of devices. Do this every few days or over the course of a month, to eliminate visitors. Now that you have your fingerprint, you can leave a few scanners around where you're trying to track the congressmen. IE, if you want to black…

iOS 8 somewhat mitigates this through using random MAC addresses when scanning

> somewhat

Due to the extremely narrow circumstances [1] under which the MAC address randomization is actually used, the feature may as well not exist.

[1] http://blog.airtightnetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomgate/

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#87

Post by k_bx »

Quentangle wrote: post #81
k_bx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. I wonder how hard would it be to extend protocol to let Facebook, for example, state that they will never go https again, so that browser would scream.

If you meant to say "never go http again", then the protocol for that already exists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security https://plus.google.com/+JoshuaBerg/posts/YrdsMzYzotr https://hstspreload.appspot.com/

That is cool, thank you!

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#88

Post by ambrop7 »

zobzu wrote: post #69
ambrop7 wrote: post #68

Most people don't understand the WPA PSK security model and its insufficiency for anything but private networks where every device is trusted. When you give someone the PSK, you give them the capability to impersonate the access point. That being said, is there any better solution for public networks? One where giving someone a password doesn't let them impersonate you. I'm not sure how good support for EAP-TLS is on…

since theres no url associated any trusted ca-signed cert is valid (for example a cert from startssl). if you use self signed that actually protects you since then the client complains. SOME clients pin the certs (thus you cant impersonate the AP even with a trusted CA-signed cert) but its still quite rare.

But in theory the same CA infrastructure as used for the web could be used. The SSID of the network would be interpreted as the "domain".

So if I try to connect to SSID example.com securely, I would verify that the AP can identify itself as example.com (based on the CA roots which I trust) - exactly the same way as a web browser would if I tried to connect to https://example.com.

Or is this already supported but nobody uses it?

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#89

Post by victorvation »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #80
victorvation wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Whenever wifi is enabled, your device is sending out probe request frames, which includes your list of preferred networks/networks you've connected to before.

Could it be used as a sort of fingerprint to identify phones? I'm imagining using a scanner to create a list of phones in the area. You walk through the halls of congress to compile a list of devices. Do this every few days or over the course of a month, to eliminate visitors. Now that you have your fingerprint, you can leave a few scanners around where you're trying to track the congressmen. IE, if you want to black…

That's definitely possible. There are already a few startups that use the same method to track analytics and repeat customers.

Re: What we give away when we log on to a public Wi-Fi network

#90

Post by tetraodonpuffer »

why aren't 'know networks' gps-geofenced on smartphones? You have GPS, if your previous 'known network' (say, home) was in location X, it should not automatically connect (or even try to connect) to it at X + 20 miles.

This way you should be able to keep your phone from connecting automatically to (or even looking for) a network that shouldn't be there in that location in the first place, and if you always tether to it it would work for your laptop too...

Post reply on HN