Vulnerability of the smartphone applications to connect with compromised access point

Abstract

Nowadays, people are able to use services like banking, reservation, social network services and etc, which are provided in the form of a smartphone application on the basis of the Internet. Smartphone can access the Internet by using the cellular network or Wi-Fi interface, whenever and wherever the user wants. The users generally prefer to access the Internet through Wi-Fi interface rather than the cellular network, because usage fee of the cellular network is very expensive and speed is slower than Wi-Fi interface. As a result, most people search for open access point and connect to it when they want to use wireless Internet even though this access point is unknown. However, this inconsiderate connection with unknown access point is very dangerous. If users get connected to the compromised access point, malicious hacker is able to intercept or modify every packet that is transmitted from or to the user smartphone. In other words, malicious hacker can do various Man-In-The-Middle attacks to the user. In this paper, we explain vulnerability of the android applications to connect with compromised access point. © 2013 IEEE.