- Eavesdropping is the process
of gathering information from a network
by snooping or sniffing on the transmitted data.
Right? So, and to eavesdrop is actually generally defined
as to secretly overhearing of a private conversation
over a confidential com communication without authorization.
So the information actually remains intact
but its privacy is compromise.
So for example, here
I actually have a kind of funny example, right?
So I have Batman in one side trying to communicate
with Superman on the other side.
And then Lex Luther is
in the middle secretly spine on the conversation, right?
So this type of attack right
is called a man in the middle attack.
Right. And you can actually do this
to eavesdropping the conversation.
And also man in the middle of attacks
also impersonate traffic or inject traffic
just like we cover in the previous lesson.
Right? So for example
you can configure a rogue access point to
imitate a legitimate access point.
And then once the client is actually connected
to the rogue access point
you can then read any unencrypted data, right?
So where the user is actually going emails that are sent
in the clear and also do more sophisticated attacks, right?
So that's what we call evil twin attacks, right?
And you will learn how to perform evil twin attacks
which is actually the impersonation of this access point
and other men in the middle of attacks later in this course.
Now you can also use war driving, right?
And war driving is the operation of actually tracking
and accessing wireless access point while moving.
Right? So you actually, that's the reason
that this is war driving and there's many other concepts
like war walking and you know, even chalking, there's a lot
of terms, you know, for basically the same operation, right?
So this is actually done in order
for you to obtain the data that is transmitted
by these wifi signals and then only, you know
the only available way to actually fight eavesdropping.
And these techniques is by encryption.
So, in the technique of war driving, a lot of people
actually, what they have done is they have, you know
long range antennas and literally either through their car
or just walking by, they actually are eavesdropping or
or capturing, you know, basically doing packet captures
in all the communications on all the frames
in the wireless network.
Right? So if for some reason the communication
was actually unencrypted, of course, you're gonna see that
that also can be used to attack things like web
for example, as a matter of fact, if you actually go
to the DEFCON, you know, hacking conference, which actually
I go every year and I invite you to, you know, probably
you know, at least have the experience to
actually go, you know, it's a pretty massive
conference. And one of the things that they
actually do there is
that they have, you know, I will not say a competition
but it's actually a tradition of people
with a whole bunch of different wireless access points
or a different, you know, wifi pineapples.
And you're gonna learn what are pineapples later in the
in the course, what they actually do is they
create this massive collection of those, you know
antennas and, you know, adapters and devices
And they actually start sniffing all the traffic
for all the communications that are actually happening.
And in this case, you know, DEFCON is in, in Vegas.
So everything that's actually going, you know
adjacent to that venue.
Right? So anything that's actually going
in that Las Vegas strip.
Now, as I mentioned before
the only available way to fight eavesdropping
and these techniques are, you know, with encryption
of course, encryption, depending on the level
of encryption that you have, it can be defeated.
And you're gonna see some examples later
with web and WPA, but guess what?
Right? Even the bad guys taking encryption
as an advantage, like for example
they can compromise the system and then ex filtrate data
over the wireless network using encryption.
So that means that data loss
preventions or DLP devices or IPS devices
or intrusion prevention systems cannot detect it.
Right. So they can also use this for command
and control communications of compromised systems.