Silicon.com is reporting of rather interesting hacker attack that happened on WLAN IT conference in London on previous week.

Apparently the hackers created malicious WLAN hotspots with forged log-in web page, that tries to install malware on users computer that logs to the hotspot and tries to access web over it.

While technically this kind of attack is rather simple to accomplish, it raises worrying implications on use of free wireless hotspots. As business travellers frequently use whatever connection is available, and carry quite important data in their laptops.

The best way to protect yourself against such attack, is to have up to date operating system and browser, with Anti-Virus and firewall installed. Also it is important to have any critical connections done over VPN, and not to use unsecure connection for any service that requires user name and password.

So if you are using open WLAN connection, do not log in to any service that requires user name and password and does not use SSL. If you really need to use such service, use VPN connection to your company office and route the connection from there. Or use some proxy service that provides SSL such as Anonymizer