Krackattack Wifi Vulnerability
As you may have seen there has been a Security vulnerability identified in how Wifi connections work, this is important as many of us use Wifi networks to access work information and we can no longer be sure that this information will remain confidential. Below we provide some more detail about the vulnerability and what we all need to do to protect ourselves against it.
What is Krackattack?
Krackattack is the name of the Wifi Vulnerability that has been identified in the Wireless Protocol WPA2, this protocol is used to secure the vast majority of Wifi connections.
The vulnerability is in how a mobile device (laptop, tablet or phone) connects to a wireless network device (often known as a router or access point) and can potentially allow an attacker to sit in the middle of a connection between the two and read the information that is sent. This means that when you access information on a wireless network an attacker may be able to see and take that information.
This vulnerability will affect almost all wireless networks and devices that connect to them, the best way to defend against this is to update your laptops, tablets, mobile phones or other mobile devices as vendors are releasing updates that fix the issue. Once your mobile device has been updated you will no longer be at risk of this vulnerability and will be safe to access information on that device on any Wifi connection.
Smartdesc Managed Security Service
At Smartdesc we are proactively identifying vendor updates and where you have a Managed Security Service we are able to install them on the devices that we manage for you.
If you don’t have a Managed Security Service with Smartdesc then we hope that the information in this post will help you to secure your devices and as ever we will support you with any questions that you have if you contact our Service Desk.
What should everyone be doing?
We should all try and make sure that people know that it is really important that they update their devices. A lot of our colleagues will access work information from personal devices and wherever they are doing this on a Wifi network there is a risk that the information that they access will not remain confidential unless their device is updated.
Most vendors have now released updates including Android, Microsoft and Apple so anyone with one of these devices can now run an update to secure the device.
