A hacker, using his or her laptop coupled with the necessary equipment can broadcast the same SSID from a table in the customer area. For instance, perhaps a coffee shop has a hotspot called “Internet Coffee” that is broadcast from the wireless AP in the back office. Hackers set up evil twin access points in areas serviced by public WiFi by cloning the MAC address and Service Set Identifier (SSIS) of an existing wireless AP.

An Evil Twin is a rogue wireless hotspot that impersonates a legitimate hotspot. You have just been a victim of a man-in-the-middle attack thanks to an ‘Evil Twin’. As you peruse your favorite social media site, access your email and check to see if a financial transaction cleared your online bank account, a hacker has been capturing all of your login credentials and data. The café is named “Bread and Butter”, your laptop identifies a wireless hotspot appropriately called “Bread and Butter WiFe”, and you eagerly connect assuming that it belongs to the café. So you are hanging out at a new café that just opened up down the street and you bring your laptop or smartphone to take advantage of the free WiFi service they provide. Posted by Geraldine Hunt on Wed, Aug 8th, 2018