Mobile Application and Wi-Fi Network Security for e-Learning Platforms

e-Learning embodies the use of electronic data along with information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. An e-Learning platform is a web-based software and represents an important tool for educators to create and manage courses on the web. However, due to the close relation of e-Learning with the Internet, such platforms are cyber-threatened and recent attacks have increasingly targeted platforms vulnerable to cryptojacking, a technique used for mining cryptocurrencies using the computing resources of devices from unsuspecting users. The number of educational web platforms has increased in the last years, and are now widespread in the mobile applications environment to reach a broad audience of users. The use of e-Learning mobile applications (m-Learning) enables employees to enrich their professional knowledge on their terms, whenever they want, by ensuring easy access to the learning material available on cloud platforms using any kind of Internet connection. The problem analyzed in the paper is related to the security of these m-Learning applications when connecting to public Wi-Fi network at a hotel or library, as an example of an unsecured network, while an office network is usually considered as secure. Our goal is to identify and mitigate the risks when users connect to a Wi-Fi public network, and also analyze how vulnerable devices are exposed to cybercriminals, as hackers can intercept communications between mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets using public Wi-Fi hotspots, namely a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack. Furthermore, we evaluate several open source penetration testing tools which aid to the identification of vulnerabilities and propose proper security solutions for e-Learning platforms in the context of using public Wi-Fi networks.