this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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So for this attack to work, the attacker needs to be able to run a malicious DHCP server on the target machine’s network.
Meaning they need to have already compromised your local network either physically in person or by compromising a device on that network. If you’ve gotten that far you can already do a lot of damage without this attack.
For the average person this is yet another non-issue. But if you regularly use a VPN over untrusted networks like a hotel or coffee shop wifi then, in theory, an attacker could get your traffic to route outside the VPN tunnel.
This is the primary reason folks use VPNs - to protect themselves on public networks. I would say it's definitely not a non-issue.
The thing is that in most cases you don’t need a VPN to protect yourself on a public network. The ubiquity of TLS on the internet already does a great job of that. Using a VPN on a public network for privacy and security reasons amounts to little more than the obfuscation of which sites you’re visiting, and some fallback protection against improperly configured websites. So while I agree it isn’t entirely a non-issue, it definitely isn’t as big of an issue as one might assume given the scary wording of the headline and article.