InfoSec Concept

Public Kiosk Security

A kiosk is a small, stand-alone booth typically placed in public utiliy places or high-traffic areas. It typically provides information and applications on education, commerce, entertainment, and a variety of other topics. Public kiosks are convenient and can be found in most airports, parks, hotels, and conference centers. If you have spent any time traveling through an airport, you might have seen a public charging and free Wi-Fi kiosk. These public kiosk has made our life easier. But most come with unseen consequences, especially those which use USB cables to charge your device. So, before you plug your phone or log in into one of these kiosks, there are some security issues to we need to be aware of.

• Public Charging Kiosk : Most of us might have been in a situation where your smart phone is running out of battery. Nowadays no one is worried when your phone beeps with low battery as most public places are equipped with charging stations. If you are at an airport, railway station or a shopping mall, it is not that big a problem because these places often have charging stations installed that can be used to charge the battery of almost any mobile phone and the kiosk will have a suitable charging port for your phone.
• Public Wi-Fi Kiosk: Recognizing internet as a critical tool for day-to-day work and facilitating increased access to it in the past few years, the Indian Government as well as Governments across the world have rolled out plans for offering public Wi-Fi. This recent explosion of free, public Wi-Fi has been an enormous boon for working professionals. This freedom comes at a price.
  
  The biggest threat to free Wi-Fi security is the ability for the hacker to position himself between the user and the connection point. So instead of the hotspot, the user will send your information to the hacker. In such a case, an attacker creates a rogue hotspot with the intent to unleash man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks on unsuspecting victims that join their rogue network. This type of attack allows an attacker to intercept the communication between you and the servers of the websites you visit, allowing them to read, insert, and modify messages.