WSpot filters the data of millions of users
According to the organization itself, this problem affects 5% of your customers. This leak has been able to put the data of many clients and users of these networks at risk. However, from WSpot they indicate that they never collect data related to financial information, so in that sense there has been no problem.
The problem with this leak was an Amazon S3 bucket that the company had misconfigured. It was basically unprotected and publicly open for anyone to access that data. In total it is estimated that they have remained exposed about 10 GB of data of the users.
This problem was discovered on September 2, and WSpot quickly took steps to mitigate it. They indicate that some 226,000 files. This corresponds to the personal data of more than 2.5 million users who connected to public Wi-Fi networks through the WSpot client.
This exposed information includes personal data such as name and surname, physical address, email or login credentials in plain text. All this they have to provide when registering to be able to log in.
Using public networks always has a risk
Although the case of WSpot is not common, we must be aware that using public Wi-Fi networks it may have security risks. It is a fact that hackers can create networks solely for the purpose of stealing data or infecting computers with malware. Sometimes we have problems with the Wi-Fi repeater or with the connection in general and we connect to any open network that we see.
If we ask ourselves where is it most common attacks appear, we can say that in places like airports, shopping centers and crowded places like a library. This is where an attacker can maliciously deploy Wi-Fi to record the sending of data and steal information and even passwords.
This means that we must always take risk into account and not make mistakes when browsing the Internet in public places. Especially avoid open and untrusted networks. They are usually the main baits used by attackers. For example networks with names like “Free WiFi”, “Free Internet”, etc.
How to connect to the network wirelessly safely? It is best to use a VPN. This will allow all the information we send or receive to be encrypted, as if it were a kind of tunnel. It will prevent a possible attacker from being able to carry out a Man in the Middle attack and record everything we send when accessing the network.
In short, attacks on public Wi-Fi networks are very common, so you always have to be vigilant. We have seen the particular case of the Wi-Fi network management software WSpot, which has leaked data from millions of users due to an error.
