I was on the train talking to my friends with my iPhone 13 locked the entire time. When I took it out to make a phone call at a train station I realized I was connected to a WiFi network I’ve never seen before. I’m 100% certain l’ve never connected to this WiFi before and furthermore the password was 12345578. I quickly disconnected it and left the area. I’m wondering if it’s possible in the time span of the 15-20 mins my phone was connected to the WiFi could someone have breached bank information, text or pictures in my iPhone. Please anyone that has knowledge respond, I’m super paranoid right now : (
Oh really, I thought hackers usually hack you through public WiFi’s or something, sry if I’m wrong. Not very knowledgeable about this
No worries. What would be required to happen (assuming your phone wasn’t already compromise), is for you to have been transmitting sensitive information to the internet.
Think of it as a thug who’s waiting just down the street. He’s dangerous, but you never left your house so you didn’t get robbed.
So there’s two different attacks to worry about with wifi:
data “snooping” - in theory, anyone on the same network could pick up the data you’re sending to someone else. This is what VPN services like to scare people with in their misleading ads. But everything we do on the internet nowadays is encrypted, scrambled so that only you and the intended recipient can read it. To anyone else it’s just jumbled-up garbage.
hacking or infecting your device - this would need a serious security flaw with your device, and the attacker taking advantage of it. In 2023, this is very rare, especially on iPhones which have good security. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s very rare and hard to do. I’m not aware of any current attacks like this.