Is your WI-FI Secure?

Is your wi-fi network secure? The short answer is NO! Recent announcements of ongoing research by Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens, partially funded by the Research Fund KU Leuven
and by the imec High Impact Initiative Distributed Trust project show that all wi-fi networks are vulnerable to at least one type of security attack, taken together they are known as “KRACK” (Key Reinstallation AttaCK).

These attacks can allow the attackers to pretend to be part of the network under attack. Some varieties can actually allow the attacker to become part of the network and even allow a clone access point to intercept network traffic, which can then be decrypted and read.

All versions of wpa and wpa2 wi-fi networks are vulnerable, as well as all current operating systems including Linux, which most people assume are the most secure. Apple, Windows and Android are all susceptible as well. Having a password on your network always helps and is certainly better than having an unsecured network, but unfortunately even password protected wi-fi networks are vulnerable and insecure.

Since the insecurity is built into the protocols being used in current networking systems, there really isn’t anything you can do as an end-user of these systems. We will all have to wait for newer versions of these protocols to become available and implemented before our networks will truly be secure. Cool Jazz wishes it had better news on this subject, just be forever vigilant and make sure your websites use https connections as those are not vulnerable to this security flaW.

If you need to learn more about HTTPS and making connections to your website secure, please give Cool Jazz Web Design a call at 859-935-1984.