Researchers use drone to hijack Wi-Fi connections

Security researchers have converted a drone to hijack already flying Wi-Fi connections to phones, tablets and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The aircraft will pretend to be a trusted network and the device will automatically connect to the aircraft.

The researchers, who will present their findings at the Black Hat conference in Singapore next week, have already demonstrated the drone to CNN. Basically, the device is a flying variant of the Pineapple, a device that entices devices of unsuspecting passers-by to connect, after which the connection can be intercepted.

Both the hackers’ drone and the Pineapple use a design flaw in Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi enabled devices that are not connected to the Internet, but have Wi-Fi turned on, send out a signal showing which networks they are looking for. An attacker can respond by pretending that it is the network the user is looking for, after which it connects automatically. That principle works especially well with public Wi-Fi hotspots, but many users still have public networks stored in their memory.

In a test in London, the researchers collected from 150 people which networks they were looking for. In another test, the drone intercepted Amazon, PayPal and Yahoo usernames and passwords created specifically for the investigation. It is unknown how the researchers bypassed SSL; probably they used a man in the middle attack where the drone impersonates the user. This allows him to unencrypt and then forward the site unsecured to the user over HTTP.