Unsecure Wifi

paulttt

Aylesbury_Duck said:

suzyc27 said:

Thank you for your comments, it’s just that they are selling the service as secure WiFi, which it blatantly isn’t. If they had just said it was open access and not secure, totally get that, but they didn’t.

So what outcome are you looking for?

41,700 UGD

ItsComingRome

suzyc27 said:

Ectophile said:

Tokmon said:

Ectophile said:

bris said:

How can it be secure if it's a shared wifi, all the people sharing the space will have access. 

By encrypting it, and then give the password to the people using the office.

But how does that make it "secure"? 

The OP said this is "co-working office space" so they will still be strangers working there who would have access. 

Because that's what secure WiFi is. Secure doesn't mean you get your own personal WiFi that nobody else knows about.

I didn’t even have to in any kind of password, it really was just open access....I just don’t understand how they can market and sell it as secure.

There is no such thing as "secure WiFi" other than it not being open to the public to use.

There is no padlock symbol used when connecting to WiFi because there is no SSL used when connecting to WiFi.

You could perhaps ask them to apportion your connection to a VLAN but they might be doing that already.

Carrot007

ItsComingRome said:

There is no such thing as "secure WiFi" other than it not being open to the public to use.

There is no padlock symbol used when connecting to WiFi because there is no SSL used when connecting to WiFi.

You could perhaps ask them to apportion your connection to a VLAN but they might be doing that already.

Muchly this. A password does not make wifi secure. Just restricts who can connect. (though they really should have one to stop someone camping outside and using it, though these days not many would).

Wifi is just a thing. You choose whether to make your machine viewable by the network to other local machines.

And for security you connect to your companies network over vpn.

Unfortunatly IT literacy has plumeted recently and what people think is a good and useful idea may often not be. Not that that will help you overturn your companies IT policy (althoough the admin password is probably "companyname"123)

MattMattMattUK

ItsComingRome said:

suzyc27 said:

Ectophile said:

Tokmon said:

Ectophile said:

bris said:

How can it be secure if it's a shared wifi, all the people sharing the space will have access. 

By encrypting it, and then give the password to the people using the office.

But how does that make it "secure"? 

The OP said this is "co-working office space" so they will still be strangers working there who would have access. 

Because that's what secure WiFi is. Secure doesn't mean you get your own personal WiFi that nobody else knows about.

I didn’t even have to in any kind of password, it really was just open access....I just don’t understand how they can market and sell it as secure.

There is no such thing as "secure WiFi" other than it not being open to the public to use.

There is no padlock symbol used when connecting to WiFi because there is no SSL used when connecting to WiFi.

You could perhaps ask them to apportion your connection to a VLAN but they might be doing that already.

I think the issue with "secure WiFi" is that it means nothing, it has no definition. Open, or password secured are the options, but even broadband providers now talk of "secure WiFi" in marketing, which is a meaningless term. I think the correct term is Public vs Private WiFi, but even that seems to have been used differently in different situations. 

There is a padlock symbol on both Windows and Android (and almost certainly MacOS and iOS as well) when you are viewing available WiFi networks, it indicates that those networks require a password to join, but it does not mean anything beyond that, such as the SSL padlock symbol in a browser. 

I do not really understand the issue though, any company IT department worth it's salt will have remote workers connecting via a VPN so connecting on public WiFi and under those circumstances whilst other users pay be able to see that there was a device connected to the WiFi they would have no access to what was being transmitted. 

Tokmon

Ectophile said:

Tokmon said:

Ectophile said:

bris said:

How can it be secure if it's a shared wifi, all the people sharing the space will have access. 

By encrypting it, and then give the password to the people using the office.

But how does that make it "secure"? 

The OP said this is "co-working office space" so they will still be strangers working there who would have access. 

Because that's what secure WiFi is. Secure doesn't mean you get your own personal WiFi that nobody else knows about.

Fair enough if you consider that "secure" but i certainly wouldn't and it's misleading to people to describe it as "secure" if they don't understand the technicalities of how it works. 

If i was renting an office space at the very least i would expect a password protected Wi-Fi network. To make it "secure" i would expect a separate VLAN for each group of users in the office. 

But i realise everyone has their own definition of "security". 

ItsComingRome

Tokmon said:

Ectophile said:

Tokmon said:

Ectophile said:

bris said:

How can it be secure if it's a shared wifi, all the people sharing the space will have access. 

By encrypting it, and then give the password to the people using the office.

But how does that make it "secure"? 

The OP said this is "co-working office space" so they will still be strangers working there who would have access. 

Because that's what secure WiFi is. Secure doesn't mean you get your own personal WiFi that nobody else knows about.

Fair enough if you consider that "secure" but i certainly wouldn't and it's misleading to people to describe it as "secure" if they don't understand the technicalities of how it works. 

If i was renting an office space at the very least i would expect a password protected Wi-Fi network. To make it "secure" i would expect a separate VLAN for each group of users in the office. 

But i realise everyone has their own definition of "security". 

But the OP is saying their work laptop "won't even connect" because the WiFi is "not secure" which is a load of cobblers.

It won't know the WiFi isn't secure as there is no such thing as "secure WiFi."

cx6

ico.org.uk describes an unsecure wifi network as one that is open ie no password

it describes a secure wifi network as one that is protected by wpa2 and requires a password to connect

Tokmon

cx6 said:

ico.org.uk describes an unsecure wifi network as one that is open ie no password

it describes a secure wifi network as one that is protected by wpa2 and requires a password to connect

If we go by that definition then a Wi-Fi network can be considered "secure" if it had WPA2 and a password but then that password was put publicly displayed so anyone could access it. Personally i think for it to be actually "secure" it needs to be more controlled than that.

cx6

Agreed, and as you say 'secure' can mean anything including having to sit in a Faraday cage with your laptop and the router to be able to use it.

However, it is common usage for a 'secure' wifi to mean having a password to connect - even that by no means means it is 'secure'

lammy82

Even if a shared-office required a password it would most likely be on a 'captive portal' type system where the WiFi network itself is unsecured and you then need to log in through the web browser on the WiFi provider's page before being able to access the internet. If your laptop is configured to only allow connections to WiFi networks that are directly password protected then you are going to struggle to connect in lots of situations.