The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation recommends travelers to avoid connecting their phone, tablet, or computer to free wireless hotspots while traveling during the holiday season.
"This is an open invitation for bad actors to access your device," the FBI Portland field office said in its weekly Tech Tuesday press release.
"They then can load malware, steal your passwords and PINs, or even take remote control of your contacts and camera."
Oversharing and location services are verboten
If there is no other choice and you must use a hotel's or airport's public WiFi network, you should make sure that you go through the provider's connection steps to steer clear of any hotspots set up by malicious actors.
When you must use an unsecured free hotspot, you should keep in mind that connecting to any of your accounts could allow hackers to snoop around on the same network to steal your user credentials or your banking info.
As an even simpler measure to protect your sensitive info while connected to a public WiFi, you can use a virtual private network (VPN) service that encrypts your data making it impossible for attackers to snoop around your Internet traffic.
A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is a simple way to keep your communications & internet usage more secure, even when you're using public Wi-Fi networks. Protect your voice & your information: https://t.co/o686GUMukR
— FBI (@FBI) September 18, 2018
The agency also recommends disabling location services on your devices and consider not sharing any info on your travels. This prevents criminals from getting a heads up that you're not at home and gives them all the info they need to go about their business uninterrupted.
If you have guests staying at your home, consider having them use a separate (guest) network if your router supports it, as a precaution against potentially vulnerable devices connecting to your regular local network.
Smart TVs and IoT devices also need to be secured
The FBI also recommended making sure that your Internet of Things (IoT) devices and smart TVs are properly configured and secured against potential attackers, not exposing your other devices to attacks.
"Unsecured devices can allow hackers a path into your router, giving the bad guy access to everything else on your home network that you thought was secure," the FBI Portland Office said at the time.
To protect your data from hackers attempting to compromise your IoT devices you should secure your home network by segregating them on a separate network, as well as changing the default password with unique and hard to crack passwords.
FBI's Portland field office also advised smart TV owners to protect themselves against potential snooping by covering their devices' cameras with black tape and by turning off "the microphones, cameras, and collection of personal information if possible."
Comments
Warthog-Fan - 4 years ago
We have two Smart TVs, but neither of them are connected directly to the cable network. They are connected to the internet thru Roku streaming players. Does this make the TVs fairly safe from hacking? We never use them to browse the internet.
serghei - 4 years ago
Safe from having your smart TV hacked, not safe from tracking: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2019/09/18/watching-you-watch-the-tracking-ecosystem-of-over-the-top-tv-streaming-devices/.
Although Roku also had its share of security vulnerabilities in the past: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-roku-sonos-to-fix-dns-rebinding-attack-vector/