Don’t Trust WiFi Hotspots in 2018 FIFA World Cup Host Cities, Warns Kaspersky

Jun. 14, 2018

As reported by Russia-based cyber security company Kaspersky Lab in anofficial blog post,over 20% of Wi-Fi hotspots in World Cup host cities have cybersecurity issues.The company states that 7,176 of approximately 32,000 public Wi-Fi networks in these cities do not use traffic encryption. This makes them potentially unsafe for use by football fans visiting the cities, as those with the know-how can snoop on their online activity.

As for the actual figures,the cities with the highest percentage of unreliable WiFi networks are Saint Petersburg (37%), Kaliningrad (35%), and Rostov (32%).On the other hand, relatively small towns such as Saransk and Samara have the safest networks with 10% and 17% WiFi spots open. Almost two-thirds of all public Wi-Fi networks in these locations use the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2) protocol family for traffic encryption, a protocol which is considered to be one of the most secure for Wi-Fi use.

Additionally, the company suggests that fans visiting Russia and planning to make use of these public WiFi networksshould connect via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) whenever possiblesince it offers levels of encryption not present on the open WiFi. It is also recommended that you use these networks for simple browsing and not for payments or banking transactions, or even sensitive work sites that require your official password. Lastly, you shouldenable the “always use a secure connection” (HTTPS) optionin your device settings to ensure you’re visiting websites over a secure medium.

This isn’t an interview! Why am I being asked to tell you about myself? :P Well, if you really wanna know, I’m currently trending worldwide on #BeingMirchi. Buy me a beer if you like my work. Cheers!