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arXiv · 2604.02774

Open Challenges for Secure and Scalable Wi-Fi Connectivity in Rural Areas

Philip Virgil Berrer Astillo·Jayasree Sengupta·Mathy Vanhoef
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Abstract

Providing reliable, affordable, and secure Internet connectivity in rural areas remains a major challenge. Pay-for-use Wi-Fi hotspots are emerging as a scalable solution to provide affordable Internet access in underserved and rural regions. Despite their growing adoption, their security properties remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we present a security analysis of these hotspot ecosystems based on Wi-Fi surveys and practical attack validation. We first perform a Wi-Fi survey conducted in two countries, namely the Philippines and India, to understand the deployment and adoption of such systems in practice. Our results suggest that Piso-WiFi pay-to-use hotspots are particularly widespread in rural regions of the Philippines, and that India's PM-WANI initiative is slowly gaining traction. We then perform a security assessment of these deployments and demonstrate two practical attacks: hijacking another user's paid connection; and rogue hotspots. We analyze the root causes of these vulnerabilities, introduce threat models tailored to pay-for-use hotspot deployments, and outline practical security improvements, including a secure caching architecture. Our findings highlight security challenges in emerging rural connectivity infrastructure and provide directions toward more secure and scalable deployments.

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Philip Virgil Berrer Astillo, Jayasree Sengupta, Mathy Vanhoef. 2026-04-03. Open Challenges for Secure and Scalable Wi-Fi Connectivity in Rural Areas. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.02774

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