An Investigation into How Smartphones Can Be Secured Against MiTM Attacks: Financial Sector

MiTM attack aims to violate data in transmission through the air medium in a wireless network; MITM exploits compromise data confidentiality and integrity and are conceivably the most productive types of cyberattacks utilised today. The increasing use of personal devices like smartphones connecting to the internet via Wi-Fi has made wireless attacks on users more crucial. The cyber adversary becomes a “middleman” between two targets to intercept private communication, decrypt traffic, and exploit valuable information like bank details and credit cards. The new WPA3 protocol security features such as 256-bit encryption, OWE (Opportunistic Wireless Encryption), Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), and disallowing outdated legacy protocols provides risk mitigation against attacks. However, vulnerabilities in WPA3 have been reported whereby a device can be downgraded from WPA3 to WPA2, which opens the system up for DoS and MiTM attacks. This research investigates Wi-Fi-based exploits against the ecosystem of smartphones in the financial sector. Aircrack-ng and Ettercap are open-source tools accessible through the Kali Linux framework. These tools are utilised to demonstrate simulated DoS and MiTM attacks to explain the reported WPA3 vulnerabilities.