Evil (not quite) Twin Wireless Networks


found on the train...

I was coming home on the train last night when my Sony VAIO said it had found some wireless networks.

I checked the wireless networks list.



I was surprised to see these networks as I was on a train and just coming out of Paddington.

Now the first two *may* have been unprotected home networks that you get when you use a wireless access point out of the box and not configure it.

However the second two look more *interesting*.

There is no such wireless network as vodafone WLAN hotspot and FREE was a bit suspicious. However the reason they look really suspicious is that these are not wireless access points but computer-to-computer networks which you can tell because of the icons.



This immediately threw up warning bells for me, so I turned my wireless off.

What did concern me was that an innocent passerby could *think* these were wireless access points (or more scary the computer could join them automatically). There are trains in the UK with wifi access, see this BBC News article and some train operators use wireless networks for their onboard ticket machines.

These are not true evil twin wireless networks as has often been reported about, but certainly was the first time I had seen something like this.

Related links

BBC News: 'Evil twin' fear for wireless net
PCWorld: Does Your Wi-Fi Hotspot Have an Evil Twin?
Avoid the Evil Twin Panic


Posted: Wed - November 16, 2005 at 09:15 PM         | |

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