In popular media, hackers are described as an elite clique of balaclava fans and PC experts who can make their way into any virtual device. But what if I tell you that you can also install almost all internet-connected devices around you, even if you can’t distinguish an SSL from an SSID?
Yes, my friend, the device you’re for is a Wi-Fi pineapple, which can turn any hacker into a hacker for the low value of $99. Because it is so reasonable and simple to use, it is vital to perceive how pineapple works to protect against attacks.
Pineapple is a small smart device first introduced in 2008 through Hak5, a company that develops equipment for penetration testers or “pentesters”. Slopers are hired through organizations to attack their own network paintings in order to spread vulnerabilities before they are discovered through some bad actors. The Pineapple allows slopes to seamlessly execute complicated attacks on public Wi-Fi network paintings to see how attacks paint and how to protect network paints from those attacks.
Pineapples are not very different from the general Wi-Fi hotspots that are used to access the Internet at home or in the office, but they are more powerful. They use several radios that a single radio discovered on maximum routers. This means that a pineapple can interact with many devices at once, which with a few dozen. In addition, Pineapple’s Internet interface is optimized to execute complex network attacks.
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“When I invented Pineapple Wi-Fi, I saw that Wi-Fi had inherent flaws that made it vulnerable to identity theft attacks,” Darren Kitchen, the founder of Hak5, told me in an email. An identity theft attack occurs when a hacker poses as a service or device to obtain a victim’s data.
“Many notorious guys had already benefited from these weaknesses, but most other people were unaware of the problem,” Kitchen added. “I think if the security of other people’s data on a device that could seamlessly exploit those vulnerabilities, it would increase awareness and the right things.”
Although pineapple has had a cult in hacker circles, it has recently gained prominence after being touted as a main plot point at The Silicon Valley and Mr.Robot exhibits.
In those transmissions, the device used to fake an online page and execute an intermediary attack to hack the FBI, respectively. According to Kitchen, who served as technical advisor in the Silicon Valley episode, the fictional depiction of pineapple in those exhibits is not that far from the truth.
Pineapple is an invaluable tool for slopes, however, its popularity is also due to the fact that it can be used for more destructive purposes. Hackers can use the device seamlessly to collect sensitive data from unsuspecting users on public Wi-Fi networks.
It’s vital to be in mind that just because you can do everything with a pineapple doesn’t mean it’s legal or you deserve to do it. Having a pineapple is legal, but taking cash out of someone’s bank account by stealing their unencrypted password is not. Pineapple simply simplifies the introduction of unencrypted passwords sent over Wi-Fi. I’m not a lawyer, but in general, if you don’t have a particular permission to use Pineapple on a network you own, as well as for anyone who prefers to connect to that network, you’re entering harmful territory.
Again: acting the exploits of a pineapple in a network that is not your property, if you are not careless running in a professional environment, can temporarily put you in illegal territory. Even if you don’t get caught, you’re still an idiot for doing it, so just … Don’t do it.
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This consultant aims to be an informative review of the overall slope of the network, as well as a reminder about the importance of non-public information security. After showing you some of the tactics a pineapple can use to attack you, I’ll also give you some undeniable steps you can take to make sure you’re never in the wrong way of a malicious pineapple attack.
The initial setup is very simple. All you have to do is connect it to your computer’s USB port, access Pineapple’s IP and he’ll take care of the rest. After updating your login details for Pineapple, you are able to verify the exploits.
EXPLOTATION 1: SHEEP WALL
Every year at DEF CON, one of the world’s most giant hacking meetings, Packet Hacking Village organizes the Sheep Wall. This is necessarily a running list of devices that have connected to an unsecured network in DEF CON. The list is displayed on a giant projection screen in the village of Packet Hacking, where everyone can see not only the device ID, but also the Internet sites they were looking to access and all applicable credentials.
It’s a lightweight way to dishonor others for increased data security, and can seamlessly create your own sheep wall, a pineapple.
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All Pineapple exploits can be loose as downloadable modules in the Pineapple dashboard and just one click to download and install on your device. Once the Wall of Sheep module (called “DWall”) is installed in a pineapple, any device that connects will necessarily transmit your browsing traffic to the pineapple owner.
The exception to this, of course, is whether the potential victim uses a virtual personal network (VPN) to encrypt their Internet traffic or visits only pages protected over HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol). This protocol encrypts the knowledge sent between the website server and your device and prevents intrusive listeners from viewing the Internet sites you visit. HTTPS is also helping your Internet service provider behave your Internet, which can only see the top-level domain behavior of its users (for example, you visited Motherboard, but not clicked on this article).
Although more than one part of the Internet has switched to HTTPS since its unsecured predecessor, HTTP, a 2017 Google audit found that nearly 80% of the hundred most sensitive Internet sites do not implement HTTPS by default. This means that anyone who inadvertently connects to a pineapple and then navigates to an HTTP edition of the site necessarily exposes all their activity on this site, from the pages visited in the search, to the user who brandished a pineapple.
Many have an HTTP edition and an HTTPS edition, which, as we’ll see in the exploit, is a security flaw that can be exploited through Pineapple.
The pineapple launched in 2008. Picture: Darren Kitchen / Hak5
EXPLOIT 2: MAN IN THE MIDDLE – PORTAL OF EVIL
MITM attacks are a way to pay attention to a user by placing a pineapple between the user’s device and valid Wi-Fi access points (in terms of knowledge of routing over the network, not necessarily literally between them in the meat space). Pineapple then claims to be the valid Wi-Fi access point so you can spy on all the data by linking the device’s knowledge to the point.
Another way to think about MITM attacks is that they’re a bit like putting a letter in your mailbox and a stranger opening your mailbox, reading the letter and then returning it to the mailbox to be sent.
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So how does a pineapple make your device think it’s a valid point? There is a local service in Pineapple that looks for service set identifiers (SSIDs), Wi-Fi network names, that are transmitted from nearby devices.
Each time you connect to a Wi-Fi network on your phone or computer, your device records the SSID of that Wi-Fi network in case you want to connect to that Wi-Fi network in the future. But this convenience comes at a major cost.
Suppose you connect to the Wi-Fi network of your favorite local coffee and your network is called “Human_Bean_wifi”. Once you leave the café, your phone or computer will start transmitting a signal that will necessarily ask if the Wi-Fi access points around the device are “Human_Bean_wifi”. It does this for any connected network in the past.
“A quick verification of the truth is enough to see if you’ve been tricked with a Wi-Fi pineapple.”
Pineapples can take advantage of this feature by searching for all SSDS released through nearby devices. It then relays those SSDDs to make the devices an access point that you have connected to in the past. So, to use the example above, Pineapple will see your phone ask: “Is this network ‘Human_Bean_wifi’?” then start transmitting your own sign that says “Yes, I’m ‘Human_Bean_wifi’, turn me in.”
In other words, it would be essentially like walking around with a set of house keys and asking every stranger you know if you’re your roommate. In most cases, those strangers will say “no,” but you also run the threat of falling on a malicious stranger who will lie to you and say “yes, of course, I’m your roommate.” Please let me in, ” then keep stealing all your stuff.
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But getting devices to connect to a pineapple is just one part of running a MITM feat. An attacker must also be able to read the knowledge sent from the device through Pineapple. There are many tactics to do this.
A pineapple can be used to create an “evil portal”, which necessarily creates fake versions to capture usernames and passwords, credit card data or other sensitive data.
These paintings consist of creating a local server on the attacker’s computer to host an Internet page that looks like a normal login page for a well-managed service like Gmail or Facebook. These pages can be seamlessly duplicated on loose online services.
The attacker then configures your pineapple so that when a device that is connected to it attempts to navigate to a website like Twitter or Facebook, it is redirected to the fake internet page served through the attacker’s computer. If the victim enters their data on this page, their username and password will be disclosed to the attacker without the user knowing that it has been hacked.
Another way to collect data about a person’s browsing behavior with a MITM attack is to use pineapple-designed modules that block forced HTTPS encryption and read knowledge that would otherwise have been secured.
For example, an online page like Motherboard, which is secure with HTTPS. If you type “motherboard.vice.com” in the search bar of your URL and tap Input, it sends an HTTP request to Vice’s servers. Vice’s servers will then process this request and respond to your device by directing it to a secure HTTPS edition of the site. (It’s the same for many online home pages, like Twitter).
Forcing users to an HTTPS edition is a wonderful way to ensure the security of a website, however, it’s the HTTP question of the first user that can be handled with a pineapple. A module called SSLSplit is able to track HTTP queries from a user’s device when connected to Pineapple. It then forwards this request to the appropriate server, but when the server responds with the secure HTTPS binding, Pineapple “removes” the secure layer and returns an HTTP edition of the site to the user.
At this point, the user will navigate through an unsafe edition of the site, which will look almost exactly the same. The only difference will be that a small lock icon will be gone from the most sensitive left corner of the screen.
This attack obviously demonstrates the importance of encrypted communication protocols such as HTTPS. Without them, all the knowledge routed between the device and the access point can be read seamlessly with a pineapple.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM MALICIOUS PINEAPPLE USERS
The tricks discussed above are just the tip of the iceberg. Fortunately, there are a number of undeniable steps you can take so you don’t get caught by an idiot with a pineapple.
Watch out for public Wi-Fi networks
The easiest thing is to connect only to Wi-Fi networks you know and trust. Your home’s net, for example, is almost from a Pineapple attack. A pineapple must also have access to the network on which it tries to monitor traffic. Therefore, unless the attacker has access to your home’s Wi-Fi credentials, you may not be able to provide you with a pineapple.
The same goes for Wi-Fi in your workplace, unless, of course, your workplace has hired a pentester to audit your network. The real danger of a Pineapple attack is on public networks: places like local coffee or the airport are privileged places for an attack. Most people don’t avoid checking if the “free_airport_wifi” item is valid and logging in without thinking.
When it comes to infosec networks, surveillance is essential. The most secure option is never to use public Wi-Fi networks. However, this is a primary headache and will almost in fact increase your cell phone’s expenses for the use of knowledge. (For what it’s worth, your cell phone isn’t immune to IMSI sensors either, but I’m moving away from it.)
PRIVATE VIRTUAL NETWORKS
If you want to access public Wi-Fi, your most productive bet is to get a VPN. VPNs are a secure way to browse the network by first connecting to a VPN server before venturing into the World Wide Web. The VPN server encrypts your knowledge before it is sent to its destination, necessarily creating a protective layer for your knowledge that makes it unintelligible to prying eyes. So, even if an attacker can see that your device has connected to your Pineapple, if you use a VPN, you may not be able to see the knowledge you are sending.
“Using a VPN remains the most productive advice,” Kitchen said. “When you use a VPN, anyone who looks at your traffic will only see an encrypted disorder. This applies to any spy, whether it’s a Wi-Fi pineapple, your ISP, an employer or even our glorious government.”
Choosing the right VPN can be a tricky challenge. Here’s an undeniable consultant with some suggestions.
ONLY HTTPS
Another smart empirical rule is to scale only on secure Internet sites with HTTPS (such as the motherboard!). Today, most internet sites where you can probably stop daily involving sensitive data have moved to this security standard. HTTP, thanks to a concerted effort through the industry to boost HTTPS, adding Google’s algorithms that favor the secure sites they encrypt. However, Pineapple modules can force a connected device to access an unsecured edition (HTTP) of a site if the stop or has not explicitly typed https: // before the domain name.
In short, be sure to verify the URLs of the Internet sites you stop at to ensure that they use HTTPS. Browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Opera make it easy to verify the security of the online page with a small lock icon that says “Safe” on the left side of the control bar and alerts users before making a stop on an unsafe site.
ALWAYS FORGET
Finally, it is vital that both once and twice you finish connecting to a public Wi-Fi network, set up your phone or computer to “forget” that network. In this way, your device will not permanently transmit SSDD from the networks you connected to in the past, which can be faked through an attacker with a pineapple. Unfortunately, there is no undeniable way to do this on an Android or iPhone, and both networks will have to be manually forgotten in the “Manage Networks” tab of your phone settings.
Another undeniable solution is to turn off your Wi-Fi capability when you’re not using it (not so undeniable for it on some devices) and not to allow your device to connect to automatically connect to open Wi-Fi. Fi Networks.
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While it’s simple to get paranoid and wonder if there’s a pineapple waiting for you every time you get a Wi-Fi connection, most of Pineapple’s exploits can be avoided seamlessly by simply keeping your network and Internet settings on your toes. Experience. Despite all their skill in handling electronic products, hackers remain heavily dependent on human error for their craft.
“Pineapple Wi-Fi is very effective at mimicking the Wi-Fi networks you’ve connected to in the past,” Kitchen said. “If you’re in a park and your device says it’s connected to an airplane’s Wi-Fi network, something’s wrong. A quick verification of the truth is enough to see if you’ve been tricked with a Wi-Fi pineapple.”