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A hotspot finder app exposed 2 million Wi-Fi network passwords – TechCrunch
A popular hotspot finder app for Android exposed the Wi-Fi network passwords for more than two million networks.
The app, downloaded by thousands of users [Ed: link appears to have been removed], allowed anyone to search for Wi-Fi networks in their nearby area. The app allows the user to upload Wi-Fi network passwords from their devices to its database for others to use.
That database of more than two million network passwords, however, was left exposed and unprotected, allowing anyone to access and download the contents in bulk.
Sanyam Jain, a security researcher and a member of the GDI Foundation, found the database and reported the findings to TechCrunch.
We spent more than two weeks trying to contact the developer, believed to be based in China, to no avail. Eventually we contacted the host, DigitalOcean, which took down the database within a day of reaching out.
“We notified the user and have taken the [server] hosting the exposed database offline,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Each record contained the Wi-Fi network name, its precise geolocation, its basic service set identifier (BSSID) and network password stored in plaintext.
[...] Tens of thousands of the exposed Wi-Fi passwords are for networks based in the U.S.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 24 2019, @08:40AM (8 children)
So the passwords were meant to be used by the public? So why is exposing them a problem?
If you don't want your password to be known by the public, don't publish it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:04AM (3 children)
No, the passwords were not meant to be used by the public, they should have been secured. But, once collected, they were uploaded to a central database so that everyone could use them. If you like it is similar to sharing the passwords collected by war-driving.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:51AM (2 children)
So which one is it? Are these meant to be private or not? First you write "not", then you said "used by everyone". One contradicts the other.
Just because the devs didn't make the database accessible only to the application is irrelevant. It is NOT POSSIBLE to not allow anonymous access if you do not authenticate each user separately and isolate their access and data. Access to central resource without authentication is by definition the same as having no access control, at least when it comes to security.
People need to learn what security means. Anyone with access to the application would by definition have access to entire database, shared password or not. It's just one reverse engineering challenge away.
.... what? Maybe you should read what this is. It's mapping out where WiFi access points are and possibly what their access requirements are. It has absolutely nothing to do with breaking into these APs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving [wikipedia.org]
And how you got the "passwords collected", I have no idea. You may want to read up on how WiFi authentication works.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday April 24 2019, @11:08AM (1 child)
My reading of TFA and other reporting leads me to understand the problem as follows:
No, it doesn't, although the TFA is particularly clear in certain details. You have read TFA, haven't you?
The hotspots were meant to be limited to a specific group of people, perhaps customers in a cafe or patients in a hospital. The passwords should have been restricted to those people who were entitled to use the hotspot, but not made available to anyone else.
However, any WiFi passwords that were entered into the device in which the app was installed, along with the geolocation of the hotspot, BSSID and other information, were sent by the app in clear to a database in the cloud which was also insecure and thus freely accessible to anyone. The result is that people other than those authorised to use the hotspot could identify hotspots close to where they were and log in and use the connections.
The app might collect several passwords as the user travelled around and also the password of, say, his own private home router, and each one of those passwords was subsequently sent to the database in the cloud in clear.
The app it was claimed would only identify public hotspots but, in actual fact, it also identified numerous private and home routers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday April 24 2019, @11:12AM
See Also:
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/04/23/hotspot-finder-app-blabs-2-million-wi-fi-network-passwords/ [sophos.com]
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/wifi-finder-hotspot-android-app-reveals-2-million-wi-fi-network-passwords-2027319 [ndtv.com]
https://www.ubergizmo.com/2019/04/hotspot-finder-app-exposed-millions-passwords/ [ubergizmo.com]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:06AM (3 children)
I would be bothered by another detail: why are the passwords accessible to any other app other than the networking daemon? An app needs to connect to the net, and possibly know what kind of connection it is. Nothing else.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:15AM
The passwords were compromised by WiFi routers. They were collected by an app on the mobile device. The app then sent the passwords to a central database which was accessible to anybody.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:00PM (1 child)
From TFA
So, a Hotel gives Jane a WiFi password. That password is only intended for hotel guests.
The app asks Jane (or maybe it doesn't even bother to ask) for permission to upload the password to the WiFi hotspot?
Jane, in the spirit of sharing, says:
[x] Yes, please upload any data from my device that you think might be useful
[_] No, please do not neglect to upload all my data
The database has a large collection of WiFi passwords that were intended to be used by selected users -- such as customers. If the WiFi were intended for the general public, then it would not have required a password.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:29PM
don't give them ideas...
Account abandoned.