The Audit - Cybersecurity Podcast

Pineapple Pager: Wi-Fi Hacking, Spying Smart TVs and a $118K Ad Bill

• IT Audit Labs • Season 1 • Episode 98

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0:00 | 30:09

What does a device shaped like a 90s pager have to do with the Wi-Fi network your laptop joined at Starbucks last month? In this episode of The Audit, Joshua Schmidt, Eric Brown, and Nick Mellem are joined by IT Audit Labs' own Cameron Birkland to get hands-on with the Hak5 Wi-Fi Pineapple Pager, the newest tool in the Pineapple lineup. Before the gear comes out, the crew unpacks a nine-year-old who ran up $118,000 in YouTube ads on his dad's saved work credit card, how Chrome sync quietly blends work and personal accounts, and new research showing LG smart TVs listening and collecting data even when they appear to be off. 

Cameron walks through what the Pineapple Pager does right out of the box, from passive recon and handshake capture to Wi-Fi 6E support and the reality that WPA3 has made many classic attacks far harder to pull off. Eric explains how probe requests let a rogue device impersonate your home or office network to set up a man-in-the-middle attack, shares what he captured at the Minnesota State Fair, and the team talks through war driving with GPS and WiGLE and how these demos land in security awareness training. The episode wraps with the debut of a new segment, Eric Reacts, featuring a pilot's breakdown of a gnarly crosswind landing. 

In this episode: 

• The Wi-Fi Pineapple Pager runs recon by default and supports Wi-Fi 6E, though WPA3 networks remain out of reach for today's Wi-Fi pen testing tools. 

• Eric explains how your devices call out for saved networks and how a rogue access point answers back to launch evil twin and man-in-the-middle attacks. 

• War driving in 2026 comes to life with GPS modules, WiGLE integration, and everything a pocket-sized device picked up in one afternoon at the state fair. 

• New findings show LG smart TVs listening and collecting data through automatic content recognition, which helps explain why TV prices stay so low. 

• A $118,000 ad bill shows what happens when Chrome sync blends work and personal accounts and kids share a browser with a company credit card.

If you've ever connected to public Wi-Fi without a second thought, this one is worth sharing with your team. Like, share, and subscribe for more of the discussions shaping the future of cybersecurity and IT. 

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