Ethical hackers have developed a drone that can connect to your phone's Wi-Fi from mid-air and potentially steal account information, passwords, and personal data off your device. New technology was installed on a small airborne drone dubbed 'Snoopy' to show holes in security that potential hackers or groups could exploit, as demonstrated in the video below.
Sensepost security researcher Glenn Wilkinson shows off the drone to CNN, testing it out in the skies of London to demonstrate how it would work. The technology aboard the drone tricks a phone or device on the ground looking for a Wi-Fi network into thinking the signal broadcast by the airborne machine is a network the person has connected to in the past. Once the two are linked, the person connected to the drone on a computer can gain access to your files.
"Their phone will very noisily be shouting out the name of every network its ever connected to," Wilkinson said. "They'll be shouting out, 'Starbucks, are you there? McDonald's Free Wi-Fi, are you there?'"
The drone sends back a signal acting as one of those networks being searched for and feeds the connection back to Wilkinson's laptop, where he intercepts everything the person's phone sends and receives. "Your phone connects to me and then I can see all of your traffic," he explained. The research will be presented next week at the Black Hat Asia cyber-security conference in Singapore.
Account information and passwords are one thing, but even the most benign-seeming hints can give the person more information about you than you'd like them to have. "I've seen somebody looking for 'Bank X' corporate Wi-Fi," Wilkinson said. "Now we know that that person works at that bank." Depending on who would be using this technology, your position at a bank could be used against you in some fashion.
Keeping your Wi-Fi settings off when you're not connected to a home, work, or public network is a good way to keep yourself safe, as you won't be broadcasting a search signal, and it also saves your phones battery.
Source: CNN Money