this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
736 points (91.0% liked)

Technology

59438 readers
3536 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Client isolation doesn't help. That is just the access point not routing traffic between connected devices. The problem with WiFi is it is a radio signal. Everybody in range can receive 100% of all communication on that network. Just by being in range the attacker can do passive sniffing. No wiretap needed like with cabled networks.

WiFi is encryoed if it uses a password. So any public WiFi without a password can be sniffed by literally every device in range (no need to connect to the WiFi for sniffing). On public WiFi with a password, the radio signal is encrypted but everybody knows the encryption key. So everybody connected to the WiFi can still sniff the traffic of everybody else.

That encryption is only on the WiFi level, so encrypted radio signals, not on the actually traffic level (like TLS/HTTPS etc).