Looking at the Wu Yifan incident from the perspective of network security: a textbook-level "man-in-the-middle attack"

Foreword:

After boiling ups and downs for several days and nights, the bewildering love and hatred of bamboo and lottery finally settled. In the police notice on the evening of July 22, 2021, Liu, a liar who had been lurking, surfaced.

According to the police notice, the scammer has many small numbers. He first pretended to be other victimized women to contact Du Meizhu, then pretended to be Du Meizhu to contact Wu Yifan, and finally pretended to be Wu Yifan’s studio to contact Du Meizhu. In this way, the statements of disagreement on both sides are all reasonable. The people who eat melon thought it was bamboo vs. lottery, but it was actually bamboo vs. liar vs lottery. They were all surprised: Can this script still be written like this?

In fact, in the field of network security, this scam has a proprietary name, called "Man-in-the-middle attack" (MitM).

The nature of the network is connection. When you go online, you are connecting to another computer. What you say between you and this computer is confidential, and other computers don’t know.

However, some bad guys will manipulate the computer to insert between you, and you and the other computer have not noticed that the other person in contact has changed people, then the communication between you will be intercepted by this "third party" computer. It can even be tampered with. Now let the famous artist Feng Gong demonstrate the classic scene of man-in-the-middle attack:

Is the man-in-the-middle attack far away from us?

No, you may be attacked by man-in-the-middle attacks when you go to a coffee shop to connect to Wi-Fi, open new mail, or even go online normally.

When the public Wi-Fi router is not effectively encrypted, hackers can break into the Wi-Fi router. If someone accesses a bank website via Wi-Fi, they may jump to a fake website prepared by the hacker. If you enter With your own bank account password, hackers will get sensitive information.

When you open a new e-mail, pay attention to whether the e-mail is phishing, and whether it is asking you to fill in your account password in the name of an emergency. This is likely to be an e-mail for fraudulently obtaining personal information. Regarding phishing emails, you should poke here (the blue word in front of it is right).

The Internet is not safe either. Hackers will use HTTPS spoofing, DNS spoofing, SSH hijacking and other means to allow you to visit websites controlled by hackers. The website controlled by the hacker may be a completely fake website, or it may be a real website with a malicious js code injected. But no matter what, when you enter your account password, the hacker's server will receive your information.

How should we prevent man-in-the-middle attacks?

There are many ways of man-in-the-middle attacks, so there are many ways to prevent them. Make sure that the website starts with https, don’t ignore browser alarms, and try not to use public Wi-Fi to prevent malicious emails.

In addition, we can also choose a public DNS service with protective functions, such as the home version of OneDNS (OneDNS guide: copy this link https://onedns.net to the browser) to block suspicious websites and avoid For DNS hijacking.

Surfing the Internet don’t just focus on eating melons. It is necessary to learn a new posture to protect the privacy of yourself and your family.