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Users Report Faulty WPA In 2nd-Gen IPod Touch
jesuscash writes "It seems early adopters of the new iPod Touch are out of luck when they bring it home and attempt to connect it to their WPA/WPA2 secured network. Reading this Apple forum thread shows that many tests with different configurations show a no-go on WPA. Some of the last entries give the best clue, revealing a 'received deauthentication' error in their router logs. Apple has yet to respond."
I would have thought this is the kind of undocumented feature that should have been picked up in the most cursory testing. If Apple was that hasty in bringing this product to market, they are not going to do their reputation any favours.
Because WEP is horribly, horribly broken, and the only two options an iPod touch has of connecting to an access point are to use WEP, which is almost as bad as plaintext at this point, or use plaintext.
... That WAS a car analogy, right?
To use the ever-present car analogy, it would be like one of a car's most advertised features only working if you removed all the locks, and then complaining that somebody covered it by saying "A single bug is worthy of coverage? Can I get a WTF?!".
Some quality issues? OK.
But WPA encryption is something huge!
Since WEP doesn't work this means that you can only connect to unsecured network. And I'm not going to remove encryption because Timmy with his iPod Touch wants to check his mails.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
When a company grabs enough market share this sort of thing is bound to happen when they screw up. It becomes news. People like to hate the 'big guys' (MS Sony, etc) and frequently for very good reason. Imagine how sloppy they'd get if people weren't all over them for their mistakes.
Last time *I* checked, having unencrypted Wi-fi *does* renders Wi-fi completely useless. Useless as in having unknown people downloading terabytes of crap over your pipes in the dozens.
So yes, having no Wi-fi connection doesn't render an iPod completely useless, but it sure takes away most of the fun.
And no, I will not switch my Wi-fi over to unencrypted or laughable WEP. Not because of a single bugged device and not because anything else. Living near the city centre with 100 households or more within my Wi-fi range prohibits even thinking about that.
But it just works!
Actually reading the linked thread (I know, I know..) the problem seems more linked to D-Link routers + iPod Touch, not iPod Touch can't do WPA. "Apple has yet to respond"? I don't see that anyone on that thread filled a bug report, how the hell do you expect them to respond unless you tell them???
Why the hell did this get promoted to the front page?
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
Wipe the apple fanboi drivel from your chin, the ipod touch is getting slammed recently because apple have introduced a number of bugs for it with their awful 2.1 update. I suggest you check their forums to see just how many problems have occurred since this rubbish `upgrade'. You'll note apple has not acknowledged a single one. Playing the microsoft game of pretending there are no issues. They also prevent you from rolling back to a previous version. So it is tough-shit if you upgraded.
this just stinks of the same quality as the occasional "MS did something not noteworthy, but we can spin it to be negative"
Broken WPA is pretty bad. I mean this is a product that has supposedly finished testing and gone to market, and a basic network security/authentication feature isn't working. This is definitely news.
As for your comparison with Microsoft, consider what you would be saying if this had happened with the Zune.
Amnesty International
And I'm not going to remove encryption because Timmy with his iPod Touch wants to check his mails.
Unless "Timmy" is your clueless CEO and goes "Me got present from wife. Me want to check email"
Problem solved.
Deleted
Spell Apple with the Euro symbol for the E.
wpa 1/2 has been supported by other consumer facing products for several years. Apple is supposed to be about high quality devices that we are happy to pay a premium for. Security is a big deal these days. For Apple to release a product with such a key feature horribly broken is - horrible; this is not a made-up complaint.
Horns are really just a broken halo.
And mine doesn't. Which is fun, because after it fails, you get to re-enter the entire 64 digit WPA key on the little keyboard, which would be much less annoying if the fuckers at Apple didn't place the numbers and letters on different keypads that you have to toggle between.
When I tried using WEP, the damned thing didn't work with a standard password, so I got to enter that in hex too. (That did work.)
So you'd think someone, somewhere, would realize a little "hex" keyboard would be a godsend when entering wireless keys if they're not going to allow copy-and-paste.
Or they could be REALLY smart and allow you to set the key from iTunes.
But in any case, it in fact does not actually work. So now we have several anecdotes, and therefore data, right?
But this is from a closed-source company that had the arrogance to claim that its products 'just work'.
This is WPA, ffs. It's not rocket science to get this to work properly.
Apple has failed to test its product properly before releasing it. That is worthy of comment and condemnation.
While the absence of copy/paste is a valid complaint, you utterly fail your example by suggesting transmitting the key over the public internet in plaintext. By the time you're willing to do that, just use a friggin' passphrase--a properly-made one will be far more secure than anything passed via the channels you indicate.
A real geek uses eap-tls
A real geek has a long random key for WPA, and passes it around on a pen drive.
A real hacker leaves the network open and uses openvpn to connect to his gateway.
Proposed solution: lock down MAC access lists to prevent unauthorized access because encryption is reducing maximum net bandwidth between AP and client.
Verdict:
a. full protection against sniffing, eavesdropping and cracking attempts is needed all the time while maximum throughput is not. I don't know about the net effect on bandwidth but the speed limit is usually between AP and ISP for anything but demanding intranet file transfers. The considered maximum use case is less than three machines watching HD-video streams simultaneously from the inhouse file server. WPA2 is able to deliver this with a healthy margin.
b. There are users on my net with entry-level IT knowledge. It is absolutely unrealistic to assume they can be trained to use SSL when needed, let alone comprehend PGP or VPNs. Although this may be considered standard procedures by some, they are clearly not, within the general internet population. I don't want to undertake large educational projects, but make the best efforts to secure my part of the transit line. WPA2 can deliver this, as it is part of all recent OS'es and requires no special knowledge other than SSID and PASS.
c. VPNs could be argued to be standard procedures, too, given recent OS'es, but require more training or support that I'm able to give. Also, I don't want to implement numerous test cases to ensure that a VPN-ed setup does not allow for out-of-tunnel connections, which at least Windows will try to do under some circumstances (VPN down but WIFI online).
d. routers may be cheap, but I am cheaper. Additional electricity consumption (+10W idle) and equipment purchases are not my style.
Conclusion: proposed solutions do not fit requirements, time and budget contraints.
Personal opinion: it is ironic to propose VPN encryption after explicitly stating that encryption generally limits available bandwidth. In this contect, proposing PGP-encrypted emails through an SSL-encrypted link to the email provider using a VPN-encrypted last mile access is pretty laughable. Purchasing 50 EUR worth of equipment that consumes 30 EUR worth of electricity per year, redesigning the local network and educate several users to offset for the shortcomings of one single device is perverse.