In news: A number of vulnerabilities in a majority of Wi-Fi products have left millions of devices to be impacted.
About FragAttacks-
- The flaws named FragAttacks were discovered by cybersecurity expert Mathy Vanhoef, a postdoctoral researcher at the New York University of Abu Dhabi.
- Since the vulnerabilities are design flaws in the Wi-Fi standard, any device released after 1997 could be vulnerable.
- He previously highlighted Kracattacks, which were a serious flaw in WPA2, a protocol used to secure protected Wi-Fi networks.
- ‘FragAttacks’ or fragmentation and aggregation attacks, allow an attacker who is within range of one’s Wi-Fi device to steal user information, including passwords.
- Anyone who can receive radio signals from a router or Wi-Fi hotspot can use these vulnerabilities and steal data from devices.
- While the design or hardware level flaws are much harder to exploit, the programming mistakes are quite easy to abuse.
- There are security updates available for some of the products. E.g. Microsoft has rolled out Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 update, which has patches for these vulnerabilities.
Source: Indian Express
