Wardriving is horribly easy. It really is. Just open up your laptop in any public place and by the time you crack open your Firefox you’ll have 3 or 4 open access points to choose from. Either its "linksys" or "default" or "philips" .. It does not really matter. You’ll be able to surf away using some poor noobs pipe. Now you go about your merry way and being the white-hatt hacker you are, choose not to reset the password on the open router or change the access points name to something terribly inappropriate.
So you surf and check your mail. Oblivious to the fact that .. you might be sniffed ! Think about it: Upon entering an unsecured wireless network you are in essence plugging your pc into a hub. Every peace of traffic that goes over the wire is seen by the other stations on the network. This enables "evil hackers" to penetrate an unsecured network and sniff the data going across the wire(less). But what if that access point is in fact NOT owned by a Noobie ! What if it where a honey-pot .. a flytrap for wireless warriors like you and me who piggy bag our Ip on somebody else’s wireless.
The article featured on Dailycupoftech shows you how easy it is to sniff out unencrypted email passwords. Those of you who are still using classic pop 3 email might find it a tad shocking to discover just how easy it is to sniff your password. From experience I know that it is equally easy to sniff the entire content of the email too. (as you can see its a scriptkiddie hack : but very effective)
So next time you are on somebody elses network take a few precautions.
-Try not to do any banking or extremely sensitive data – stuff.
– Use HTTPS connections where you can (for example when accessing Gmail)
– Don’t use pop or telnet.
– If you can : Use a VPN connection
-Always activate your personal firewall.
Link to the article : Dailycupoftech .