Abstract:

With the rapid development of mobile internet and the rising popularity of WiFi network, people are used to access the Internet through a variety of WiFi hotspots. However, the public WiFi hotpots not only provide conveniences, but also increase the network security risks. The wireless access is faced with serious problems, considering the radiation of the wireless signals, the openness of the space channels and the incredible public wireless hotpots. The paper briefly introduces the WiFi access model and for the incredible issues of the public WiFi hotpots, analyzes the possible security problems from the aspects of content of data, the message header, the domain system and the personal privacy with the experiments that used Wireshark and other software. These problems include the leakage of accounts and passwords when Web contents are pushed in Plaintext, the leakage of behavior trajectories when users use the browsers, the tampering with the Web contents, domain name deception and the leakage of users’ personal privacies. The paper studies these problems in order to enhance the public security awareness of wireless access.

Key words: public WiFi, information leakage, protocol packet, domain hijacking, location privacy