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Evil Wi-Fi captive portal could spoof Apple Pay to get users’ credit card data

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Researchers at Wandera, a mobile security company, have alerted Apple to a potential security vulnerability in iOS that could be used by attackers to fool users into giving up their credit card data and personal information. The vulnerability, based on the default behavior of iOS devices with Wi-Fi turned on, could be used to inject a fake "captive portal" page that imitates the Apple Pay interface.

The attack leverages a well-known issue Ars has reported on in the past: iOS devices with Wi-Fi turned on will attempt by default to connect to any access point with a known SSID. Those SSIDs are broadcast by "probe" messages from the device whenever it's not connected to a network. A rogue access point could use a probe request capture to masquerade as a known network, and then throw up a pop-up screen masquerading as any web page or app.

The Wandera attack uses this behavior to get a mobile device to connect and then presents a pop-up portal page—the type usually used when connecting to a public WiFi service to present a Web-based login screen—that is designed to resemble an Apple Pay screen for entering credit card data. The attack could be launched by someone nearby a customer who has just completed or is conducting an Apple Pay transaction so that the user is fooled into believing Apple Pay itself is requesting that credit card data is reentered. An attacker could loiter near a point-of-sale system with an Apple Pay terminal and continuously launch the attack.

Considering that the fake captive portal page is displayed beneath a "Log In" title bar, this attack may not fool many people.

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“In high footfall locations, even a very small ratio of success will yield a large number of valuable credit card numbers," said Eldar Tuvey, CEO of Wandera, in a statement e-mailed to Ars. "It’s all so easy for them. Using readily available technology, which they may be discretely carrying about their person, hackers can for the first time focus their efforts where their victims are at their most susceptible—at the checkout.”

The real vulnerability exploited here is iOS' automatic WiFi connection and the format in which iOS displays captive portal pages. There are some very simple ways to prevent this sort of attack—such as turning Wi-Fi off when not deliberately connecting to a network. The Wandera researchers reccommended that Apple and Google should "consider adopting a secure warning when displaying captive portal pages to users, so that users exercise caution." Additionally, they suggest that users close and re-open payment applications to enter credit card data and use the camera capture capability of the apps to input credit card data whenever possible.

Ars spoke with an Apple spokesperson, and is awaiting an official response. However, as the screenshots show, this spoof looks considerably different from Apple Pay's actual interface, and a card registration screen popping up after a transaction is hardly expected behavior for the service. Apple Pay never asks for credit card data during a transaction. Ars will update this story as more information becomes available.

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