Q: Can my Mac Mini be hacked from Wifi?
Hello!
I have been less than a week a proud owner of Mac Mini. First I'd love to give my gratitude for Apple for creating this beautiful little tool.
But as long time Windows user, I have run into a problem I can't seem to find an answer to.
I discovered that my Mac had Wifi connection opened. And as someone, who is used to cable Ethernet (that I'm also using now), Wifi is unknown and not very liked territory.
Wifi was on, but marked "wifi is turned on, but is not connected to a network".
N00b like I am, got a bit worried over this new connection, started poking it and found whole bunch of names, that I now understand where Wifi connections of my neighbors. Thanks to my luck, I managed to hit someone, who did not have their Wifi password protected and suddenly found myself staring at "wifi is connected to android ap and has the ip address [...]".
I panicked like ****, started trying to find a way to get rid of it and finally seemed to delete it after 3 minutes of cursing.
I then turned wifi off and changed it to "inactive" as well.
My apologizes for long text, but I'd love to hear the opinions of people, who aren't filled with panic like I am:
1) When "wifi is turned on, but is not connected to a network", does it mean it is secure and no one can hack my Mac from wifi?
2) When I accidentally entered someone else's unprotected wifi for few minutes, could my Mac have been compromised?
And most important:
3) Changing wifi to be "off" and then "inactive", am I safe from any wifi sided hacking? As in there is zero wifi connection and no one from outside could enforce it on my Mac?
I understand how stupid my questions may and likely do sound, but I'm inherently paranoid person and only one in my family, who has any semblance of understanding when it comes to computers, so there is no one to ask.
I would be very grateful if someone could help me,
Sincerely
Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)
Posted on Jun 28, 2016 11:54 AM