Windows 10 Wi-Fi Sense is a bad idea
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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.
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Think about all the people in the world, like someone's parents, who would never not install by default or use an Express option. How many people just want their WiFi to be secure and connect from their laptop. Convincing the nice old couple next door or down the street to add you on Facebook and then using their Internet connection for something would be trivial. This is social engineering for access to ISP links or to home LANs taken to a new level of simplification.
Take, as an example, my neighbour in Spain. He just got a new laptop. My buddy Ryan set up his laptop for him. Ryan had access to my wifi which isn't a wifi that I own, it was the property of the rental owners. Now, by extension, this guy in Spain who lives a few yards away from that wifi would get automatic access to that wifi connection - for free. Not only does he get access, he gets it automatically without even knowing about it. He is literally stealing Internet without knowing.
Ryan and I are both gone from there, that neighbour doesn't have Internet at home. But now, by the magic of Microsoft, he just got access to the high speed dish link of a person that has no idea that this happened and all of the people that made the connections are gone from the location.
In this scenario, one that just happened a few weeks ago, a series of normal transactions resulted in a violation of ISP rules with a person living in one location gets free Internet with no idea where it comes from. He's never used computers and would literally just think that it comes out of the air.
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@JaredBusch said:
@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.
Me too, but isn't the risk the same? How do you know they can't use the Guest wifi to access your main network? What if they torrent? Seems like you would be safer to just not let anyone on your network.
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@anonymous said:
@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?
This is being run over by someone who wasn't driving the car but once drove a car in the same parking lot that this one was in last week.
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@anonymous said:
Me too, but isn't the risk the same? How do you know they can't use the Guest wifi to access your main network? What if they torrent? Seems like you would be safer to just not let anyone on your network.
I monitor my AP like any trained person would do. Yes, user will not, but I do. I don't care if they torrent. I have logs and proof that just because it was my IP, it was not my device on my private network.
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Cars are things that people generally understand. At least at a high level. Computers are not. You never drive a car without knowing that hitting a person with it will run them over. If you don't understand that you aren't allowed out in society at all. But easily 90% of the population has no idea how a computer works and certainly not how this works. Already, just in this discussion, three active IT professionals are not in agreement as to the security implications. If it isn't completely clear to professionals in the field, it's out of the question that end users can be accountable for it.
And think about what I was talking about earlier on the other thread, the kinds of crazy being posted tonight in another community. Thread after thread of IT pros doing things that are so "not understanding what the computer is doing" that understanding something like this is a full order of magnitude more complex.
Nearly all end users and at least more than half of IT professionals rely not on understanding how something works but on a summary of "it's safe" or "turn it off".
