WIRELESS & MOBILE DEVICE SECURITY Third Edition, 3rd Edition

Evil Twins

An evil twin is a rogue AP installed with sinister intent. In the case of an evil twin, an attacker poses as a genuine network service provider, but actually eavesdrops on activities conducted on the network, and steals information and passwords. Evil twins are the wireless equivalent of the fraudulent phishing websites used to lure people into divulging their personal information.

The evil twin works because it looks like a legitimate access point. But when users connect to it and use it to access websites and perform other tasks, the access point eavesdrops on their every move, stealing credentials, passwords, and anything else of interest. Most banking websites and email clients use Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), which ...