How does hacking through WiFi really works? We know that data can be stolen but what are the hackers actually seeing on their screen that have access to our information?

2.88K views

How does hacking through WiFi really works? We know that data can be stolen but what are the hackers actually seeing on their screen that have access to our information?

In: Technology

10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I worked in Information Security company that demonstrates exactly this. Good question. it has been answered in some ways, I’ll go a different take:

The “Wi” in WiFi stands for Wireless, that is, Over-the-Air (OTA) communication via electromagnetic signals in the radio band, more specifically around 2.4GHz. To answer what a hacker might see, let’s take a look at the several layers information goes through in the process of accessing the Internet:

The OSI Model describes an abstract method of communication between two (or sometimes more) parties. Broadly speaking, a 5 layer model will look like: (merging layers of 7-layer model)
1. Physical layer – the actual signal
2. Link layer – “neighbors communication”, i.e. between adjacent devices
3. Network layer – communication within a network of devices (e.g. The Internet)
4. Transport/Session layer – responsible for handling “full conversations” (opposed to single packets of data)
5. Application layer – basically anything software adds on top of communication. (e.g. custom server applications, protocols, etc.)

Back to what a hacker would “see”: it all depends on which layer he is able to tap to!

Starting with layer 1 – Physical:
These signals are not much different than light we see, other than, well, we can’t see them. But light is a great analogy for this. Think of a flashing light bulb – using the intensity of the light, the color or the frequency of flashes, it is possible to encode messages. Just imagine your friend sending you morse code using a flash light!

A person or device (not necessarily malicious) who would tap to that layer would be able to measure the physical difference in the magnetic field, which when plotted over time – produces a signal. This is a whole story within itself, so without going into too much details, just think of a line graph – sort of like heart monitor or lie detector. The transceiver (transmitter-receiver, e.g. WiFi chip) would know how to decode these messages and pass them to the next layer.

Now let’s skip ahead to the last layer – application. One thing I have yet to mention is encryption! While this can be done in any layer, let’s focus on the Application layer. Assuming a hacker was able to tap to your wireless communication, a good encryption would still prevent him from eavsdropping or modifying the underlying data. Unfortunately, in practice, much of the data is poorly encrypted, suffers from flaws or completely absent at times. In such a case, whatever you see in your browser when you browse the web, may be replicated and mirrored to the hacker and even modified.

Hacking is a whole topic within itself, so to summarize:

TL;DR: a hacker might see anything from meaningless signals to those “cat videos” you thought was secure to download in Incognito mode through VPN within a Virtual Machine; all depending on his attack vector.

You are viewing 1 out of 10 answers, click here to view all answers.