Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense is a bad idea
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Okay so a little good news, fro Ars Technica: By default, it will not share Wi-Fi passwords with anyone else. For every network you join, you'll be asked if you want to share it with your friends/social networks.
Lots of people will just say yes to everything not understanding this. As a business, or as IT, we need to be very, very aware that employees will do this all the time.
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Although also important to note: By default, if you choose Express Settings during the installation process, Wi-Fi Sense is turned on in Windows 10.
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Here is a record of my wifi hotspot. 1 block from my house, before I moved a month ago.
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@anonymous said:
That article does not negate my arguement that this is a bad thing.
@your_linked_article said:
First, a bit of anti-scaremongering. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, you should not be mortally afraid of Wi-Fi Sense. By default, it will not share Wi-Fi passwords with anyone else. For every network you join, you'll be asked if you want to share it with your friends/social networks.
Yes, I never argued that you had to say yes. ONCE. That is the problem, once you say yes, it is shared. done. no wy to stop it from spreading.
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@JaredBusch said:
Here is a record of my wifi hotspot. 1 block from my house, before I moved a month ago.
If you so worried about it why not hide your SSID and enabled MAC address filtering. Both provide no real security by the way.
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The Ars Technica article pretty much sums up at the end like this:
- If you share a network that isn't yours, like a business one, it's your fault.
- You probably aren't secure about security at home anyway, so who cares if you are breached.
That's the wrap up in my words. They try to justify the idea by saying you can't do this for business wifi and by pointing out that you probably didn't care about security otherwise.
And sure, lots of people don't care about their security at home. But a lot of people do. Especially people in apartment buildings or large cities where it would be trivial to steal bandwidth or use a network connection for something nefarious and social engineering your way into a FB or Skype list would generally be trivial.
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@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller business networks aren't allowed to be shared.
Your linked article actually says exactly the opposite.
@your_linked_article said:
Fortunately, it appears that Wi-Fi Sense does not share credentials from networks that are secured with additional authentication protocols, such as corporate networks that use 802.1x EAP. However, if your office Wi-Fi is secured with a simple WPA/WPA2 key, you probably shouldn't share that network with Wi-Fi Sense.
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@JaredBusch said:
@anonymous said:
@scottalanmiller business networks aren't allowed to be shared.
Your linked article actually says exactly the opposite.
@your_linked_article said:
Fortunately, it appears that Wi-Fi Sense does not share credentials from networks that are secured with additional authentication protocols, such as corporate networks that use 802.1x EAP. However, if your office Wi-Fi is secured with a simple WPA/WPA2 key, you probably shouldn't share that network with Wi-Fi Sense.
Why is your business using a simple WPA2 key?
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@JaredBusch Yes, the Ars Technica article points out that business networks using standard WPA or WPA2 would definitely be shared.
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@anonymous said:
Why is your business using a simple WPA2 key?
Because most of us work in the SMB and that's plenty for that market. How many small businesses can justify building out a more complex infrastructure for WiFi?
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@anonymous Well it looks like there is some kind of heck
@your_linked_article said:
Microsoft says that Wi-Fi Sense only shares your passwords with direct friends/contacts, and not friends-of-friends. So, for example, if Adam shares a passkey with Beth via Wi-Fi Sense, Beth cannot then use Wi-Fi Sense to share Adam's passkey with her friend Cathleen.
The problem with that is I do not trust it because both article state it can share a network you already have access to.
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If you are working for a large business or some place with complex WiFi needs, sure. But lots and lots of SMBs need nothing more than WPA2.
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The real issue was you selected "Express Setup" without reading what it was doing.
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@anonymous said:
The real issue was you selected "Express Setup" without reading what it was doing.
And by "you" I assume that you mean every user given access to every network that you have responsibility for. The issue is not MY network, it it the networks that I have to protect and manage. It's a new way to social engineer end users, not me.
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@anonymous said:
The real issue was you selected "Express Setup" without reading what it was doing.
Do not try to push it on the user. That is a cop out long the lines of "Just blame the user for not reading the EULA."
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@JaredBusch are you not going your friends access to your network until you have made sure they have wifi sense disabled?
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I agree, this is a nasty trick for end users. Microsoft has been trying to make a reputation of "secure by default" and this is anything but. If you know what it is doing, not a big deal. If this happens and you don't understand it and let's be honest, end users by and large can't understand it even if they took the time to attempt to do so, then the end result is that Windows is not secure by default.
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@anonymous said:
@JaredBusch are you not going your friends access to your network until you have made sure they have wifi sense disabled?
I have a guest WiFi SSID (WPA2 protected, weak password) with no access to my private network. This is not an issue for me for random people.
Yes, before anyone gets my main SSID password I will require it.
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@JaredBusch said:
Do not try to push it on the user. That is a cop out long the lines of "Just blame the user for not reading the EULA."
If you ran someone over would you blame the car?
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@anonymous said:
If you ran someone over would you blame the car?
Completely different.
If we required everyone to be licensed (implying trained) before using a Windows 10 device , then yes, I would blame the user. But we do not require people to be trained in the details of the operating systems they use on their devices. Many do not even know what operating system they have.
