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Flying the friendly skies of WiFi

May 7, 2013 by Robert Siciliano — speaker, IDTheftSecurity.com

When getting on a flight that's three to five hours long (or more), many business professionals wrestle with the decision whether to spend the $12.95 for airplane WiFi, take a nap or watch the movie. If their company is paying for it, they might do all three.

But here's the thing: If you are connecting to WiFi on a plane and have all these company secrets and all this client data on your device, do you really think it's a good idea to connect?

What savvy business travelers often aren't savvy about is security — or, specifically, the lack of it with airplane WiFi. With airplane WiFi, there isn't any encryption preventing other users from seeing your data. The majority of the security in airplane WiFi is built into the payment system to protect your credit card. Beyond that, you're pretty much on your own.

Another issue flyers face when booting up is that their WiFi card generally defaults to seeking out a known WiFi connection and then automatically connects. It's the same process as when you're at home and you automatically connect upon booting up because, at one point, you checked that option in your settings.

But on a plane (or anywhere, really), a hacker can set up what's called an "evil twin," which is a rogue wireless network specifically set up by a bad guy to trick you into manually connecting, or to trick your device into automatically connecting.

Once you're hooked, all of your information travels through his device and he captures every packet of wireless data.

Protect yourself.

1. When WiFi is not in use, head over to your wireless network manager and right-click to disable your wireless network connection. Some laptops have a switch and others have a keyboard key.

2. If you plan to connect to in-flight service, protect your information with a VPN. Hotspot Shield VPN is a free proxy that protects your data by ensuring that all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads, etc.) are secured through HTTPS. With Hotspot Shield, your device basically will be surfing through a protected tunnel throughout the in-flight service.

Robert Siciliano is an identity theft expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of "99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen."

Security