CyberGlossary

Attacks & Threats

Wi-Fi Pineapple

Also known as: Pineapple

Definition

A commercial wireless auditing platform from Hak5 that automates rogue access point, evil-twin, and man-in-the-middle attacks, widely used in red-team engagements.

The Wi-Fi Pineapple bundles a multi-radio router with a custom Linux distribution and modular tooling that streamline wireless attacks: passive client discovery and probe-request harvesting, evil-twin SSID impersonation, captive-portal credential capture, deauthentication, KARMA-style automatic association, and HTTP/HTTPS interception when stripping is feasible. Although marketed for authorised pentesting and security research, the same capabilities are abused by attackers to harvest credentials at conferences, airports, and offices. Defences include WPA3-Enterprise with strict certificate validation, disabling auto-join to open networks, using VPNs over untrusted Wi-Fi, MDM-enforced trusted-SSID lists, and WIDS that detect KARMA and evil-twin behaviour.

Examples

  • A red-team operator using a Pineapple Mark VII near a conference venue to capture credentials from auto-joining laptops.
  • Setting up a Pineapple as a portable evil twin to test wireless policy compliance in a corporate office.

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