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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Want Your Phone Hacked? Visit These 10 Airports

July 19, 2018

When Sharon and I give security presentations, the topic of insecure Wi-Fi networks typically makes it in a few slides. Tech Republic posted information about a report from Coronet that identified the ten worst airports for Wi-Fi security. To quote the post, "Hackers can use the poor cyber hygiene and insecure Wi-Fi at many airports to inject advanced network vulnerabilities like captive portals, Evil Twins, ARP poisoning, VPN gaps, honeypots, and compromised routers." Any of these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to get the account credentials for cloud services such as Dropbox, Office 365, G Suite, etc. In other words bad news for users.

Dror Liwer, Coronet's founder and CISO, said in a press release, "Far too many U.S. airports have sacrificed the security of their Wi-Fi networks for consumer convenience. As a result, business travelers in particular put not just their devices, but their company's entire digital infrastructure at risk every time they connect to Wi-Fi that is unencrypted, unsecured or improperly configured. Until such time when airports take responsibility and improve their cybersecurity posture, the accountability is on each individual flyer to be aware of the risks and take the appropriate steps to minimize the danger."

To cut to the chase…here are the worst 10 airport Wi-Fi networks according to the report.

  1. San Diego International Airport, San Diego, CA (Score: 10)
  2. John Wayne Airport-Orange County Airport, Santa Ana, CA (Score: 8.7)
  3. William P Hobby Airport, Houston, TX (Score: 7.5)
  4. Southwest Florida International Airport, Fort Myers, FL (Score: 7.1)
  5. Newark Liberty International Airport, Newark, NJ (Score: 7.1)
  6. Dallas Love Field, Dallas, TX (Score: 6.8)
  7. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, AZ (Score: 6.5)
  8. Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Charlotte, NC (Score: 6.4)
  9. Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, Detroit, MI (Score: 6.4)
  10. General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport, Boston, MA (Score: 6.4)

If there is any good news to this story, the most secure airports are Chicago-Midway International Airport, Raleigh Durham International Airport, Nashville International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. Dulles is our own "home" airport, but perhaps we should think about flying into Midway instead of O'Hare when we travel to Chicago.

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