As you may have heard from a variety of news sources, there is a wifi security vulnerability that is potentially very damaging to your privacy and security.

How Does It Work?

Using some specialized software, an attacker (who must be within close physical proximity) could potentially break the wireless encryption used to protect your computer's wireless communications.

Should I Worry?

While it is a true panic button event for software and hardware companies (Apple, Microsoft, LG, Samsung, etc), this vulnerability is fairly easy to deal with at a personal level.

Most websites today use HTTPS. This means that even if an attacker could unencrypt and spy on your traffic, the encryption provided by HTTPS still protects you.

Wireless encryption is like an outer layer of encryption around the HTTPS encryption that protects your information travelling to and from a website. So, even if the outer layer is compromised, the inner layer still protects you. 

It is essentially an encrypted tunnel within an encrypted tunnel.  Your data is safe inside the innermost tunnel.

What Should I Do?

The safest way to keep working wirelessly is to make sure that every website you visit uses HTTPS.

Look for the lock in the browser address bar and https:// in the address.