Is Hotel WiFi Safe?

Besides all that, we're here to talk about Wi-Fi.

You know, it's fascinating to me, and we were just talking about this before the podcast, is that...

The threats around Wi-Fi haven't really changed over the years.

We're talking way back, right? We've been always having this conversation about Wi-Fi on the show.

And if you look back on our previous episodes, you'll see...

We're kind of talking about the same thing, even though there's new attacks and there's kind of new methods.

But at the end of the day, the same advice still applies that we're going to talk about on this podcast today.

And it's because it's not all technology that causes the risks.

That's right.

That's right.

So just to kind of frame everything.

So I was kind of inspired by a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft released some details about an attack that they've been seeing more focused on intra ID, which is, you know, kind of the central authentication system for Microsoft products.

And there is a dub, this attack called captive crunch, not captain crunch, like the cereal.

I mean, a little confusing there, but captive crunch, uh, And this malware campaign is essentially pretty widespread, according to Microsoft.

So this has been affecting hotel chains, large conference centers, things like that.

And what they found was that these are mostly state-sponsored threat actors that are doing these things.

But what happens is you'll be... just like you normally do, connect to the hotel Wi-Fi, and you get this thing called a captive portal, which is some type of login or authentication so not everybody can access the Wi-Fi network, but hotel guests specifically.

And these vary by hotel chain, by the systems that they're using, but what's happening is that users will get this pop-up for, hey, Microsoft found malware on your machine.

You need to click here.

Or there'll be a prompt for your user credentials, like for your Microsoft login credentials with something saying, hey, this is Microsoft tech support.

We found this thing on your computer.

You need to follow these instructions.

And all these things kind of vary, but it's one of those things of if you're not aware... during that login process of something weird, like why is the hotel asking me to scan my computer or why am I getting this Microsoft login prompt? It definitely is out of the ordinary.

And I think that's the one trigger for a user, right? Is you're not seeing a hotel login page.

That should be your first warning sign that something else is going on here.