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How To Hack Wi-Fi For Fun And Imprisonment With Crypto-Mining Injection

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 07 2018, @04:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the another-reason-for-using-VPNs dept.

janrinok writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Thanks to the ridiculous valuation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, cryptomining code has become a common mechanism for converting authorized and stolen computing cycles into potential cash.

Antivirus and ad-blocker makers have responded by trying to halt crafty coin-crafting code from hijacking CPU time, particularly in browsers.

For those interested in violating computer laws – please, don't – and those interested in computer security research projects, a developer named Arnau, based in Spain, has published a proof-of-concept walkthrough for hacking public Wi-Fi networks to inject crypto-mining code in connected browsing sessions.

[...] As Arnau explained, the attack – demonstrated on a VirtualBox set up rather than in the wild – can be automated. The published version doesn't work with requests for HTTPS webpages, though the addition of sslstrip could solve that.

The code, mostly Python, is available on GitHub. ®

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @03:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @03:29PM (#619529)

    That is unsecured access points, still in 2018 when people should know better. Sure, even people who are on the same WPA2 secured AP do pose a threat to each others but at least there are barriers in place.

    I mean would it kill you if your wifi had a password? You could even include it in the name of the AP.