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Windows 10's Version of AirDrop Lets You Quickly Share Files Between PCs (theverge.com)
Microsoft is testing its "Near Share" feature of Windows 10 in the latest Insider build (17035) today, which will let Windows 10 PCs share documents or photos to PCs nearby via Bluetooth. The Verge reports: A new Near Share option will be available in the notification center, and the feature can be accessed through the main share function in Windows 10. Files will be shared wirelessly, and recipients will receive a notification when someone is trying to send a file. Microsoft's addition comes just a day after Google unveiled its own AirDrop-like app for Android.
I used to have my "Airdrop-like" feature decades ago, simply by clicking on "share via bluetooth", until phone manufacturers (or OS companies) decided to ban sharing stuff over bluetooth. Which is the same Apple has, with the exception that they combine bluetooth and wifi (and I guess their own API) to pretend they did something new/unique.
Computer monkeys at Google and Microsoft must be really boring if they are "implementing" airdrop. Just stop f*cking messing with the information users are allowed to share (allowed... ha... it's supposed to be my bloody phone!).
Just use woof its a simple python script that allows easy sharing temporarily. I have been using it cross platform for years.
A new (un)security portal opens.
needs a catchy name - how about BlueHole ?
I wonder if it will work with any of the other bluetooth sharing things, like the Samsung one.
I wonder which one will become the standard, if ever, or if there'll eventually be half a dozen of them obstinately refusing to talk to each other.
IR Link was horrible, because most laptop IR transceivers had a very narrow view. It was sort-of okay for PDAs if you held the PDA directly against the IR port, but impossible to align for a pair of laptops reliably.
Bluetooth file transfer is also pretty mature at this point. I've used it between Windows, Mac, and FreeBSD machines and with old Nokia and new Android phones (it probably works with iOS, though it didn't in the original iPhone). Pairing is a bit annoying, but once that's done it's basically drag and drop.
AirDrop is nice because it uses bluetooth to identify nearby machines and to advertise public keys, but then creates a two-device ad-hoc wireless network and transfers at high speed. WiFi direct now provides a somewhat more standard and mature mechanism for doing this.
I'm quite annoyed that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all developing independent protocols for this though. I want an open protocol that works with all of my devices, not a mess of protocols where I can use one between my laptop and Android phone, one between my laptop and iPad, none between my iPad and Android phone, a different one between Windows devices, and so on.
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Or may I say, a security hole waiting to be used?
Quite frankly, this strikes me as one of those things that have very limited usefulness with a wealth of exploit potential behind it. What is the scenario for the use of this feature? When you have a meeting and want to exchange documents? What company does NOT have a wireless AP in their conference rooms these days? Oh, when you have to exchange documents with someone outside your company who you can't let on your WiFi for security reasons? Use an USB Stick. If you're security conscious enough to not let a stranger onto your WiFi that is administered and controlled by your IT staff, you should definitely be security conscious to NOT let some marketing or management computer illiterate make decisions about sharing stuff on his laptop, the same laptop that probably contains the marketing strategy or the financial data for the next quarter, most likely in the same folder as the document that should be handed over.
So what sensible application is there for this security-hole-in-the-making?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I congratulate Microsoft for this great achievement, they finally implemented a feature which Ericsson R520 had 17 years ago.
Let's use the most insecure protocol ever developed to send potentially personal information into the ether for everyone to grab.
What could possibly go wrong?
I'd prefer a system for portable devices that required physical contact.
If there's so much data to move you can't hold the devices against each other reliably for long enough... you can probably find the time to sit them on a table.
I'll second this; Bluetooth proved useful in scraping everything off a Nokia 6310 onto a laptop. Quaint old phones without USB or anything.
Agreed, however if Microsoft do this right and provide support in iOS and Android then they'll have a solution which works for 100% of the mobile market and 83% of the desktop market.
This isn't so so great if you're the 17% on something else - but better than AirDrop today which only works on 13% of desktops and 18% of phones.
Now there was nothing to stop Apple (or even Google) doing the same - however they've had 5 years since AirDrop came out to do something ... but chose not to.
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That is exactly why it was good. Line of sight in a narrow angle is secure. Bluetooth is insecure by design.
Recent Bluetooth vulnerability.
An open protocol could exist between PC and Android. Apple would never want to play ball as file transfer would be at odds with the Golden Cage concept.. or was it called Walled Garden? I do not recall. ;)
I think of it as the Golden Shower Cubicle concept.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
This feature will probably have couple of tiny bugs. You know, putting disk usage to 100% for 5 days, wiping the hard drive of both computers, deleting installed programs. That kind of stuff.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Bluetooth file transfer is also pretty mature at this point. I've used it between Windows, Mac, and FreeBSD machines and with old Nokia and new Android phones (it probably works with iOS, though it didn't in the original iPhone). Pairing is a bit annoying, but once that's done it's basically drag and drop.
...
I'm quite annoyed that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all developing independent protocols for this though. I want an open protocol that works with all of my devices, not a mess of protocols where I can use one between my laptop and Android phone, one between my laptop and iPad, none between my iPad and Android phone, a different one between Windows devices, and so on.
Not sure why we need a new protocol when we've got OBEX.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Like you say it's supported by literally everything.
My Galaxy S5, Windows machine and Mac all support it. Even old feature phones did - in fact that's where it was invented.
As far as pairing goes it's not too bad now. With NFC you can tap to pair, though I've never owned two devices that support it. Even without it you can fiddle around in the GUI once to pair and then click OK on both devices - the PINs are synched automatically. It's about the minimum security that is viable to stop drive by downloads.
I.e this is a solved problem and there's no need for a new protocol. If it is more convenient it will necessarily be less secure. And a vendor specific protocol is obviously not going to be much use with a heterogeneous bunch of devices.
Also if you want more speed Android, Mac, Windows and Linux/BSD all support SMB networking over Wifi. So for a large file you can just copy to a mutually visible network share.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I don't like Apple's push for proprietary interfacrs either but to be fair to them they support OBEX over Bluetooth already, at least for OS-X.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
IR Link was horrible, because most laptop IR transceivers had a very narrow view. It was sort-of okay for PDAs if you held the PDA directly against the IR port, but impossible to align for a pair of laptops reliably.
On the other hand, most of the PDA and phone I've had back then all worked nicely. Seems engineering spent more time testing if the IR solution was optimal, compared to laptop where IR was an additionnal check on the feature list.
Bluetooth file transfer is also pretty mature at this point. I've used it between Windows, Mac, and FreeBSD machines and with old Nokia and new Android phones (it probably works with iOS, though it didn't in the original iPhone).
Nope. Bluetooth file sending (OBEX) doesn't work on iOS anymore. Apple has removed the feature and replaced it with a proprietary Bluetooth-enabled version of AirDrop.
AirDrop is nice because it uses bluetooth to identify nearby machines and to advertise public keys, but then creates a two-device ad-hoc wireless network and transfers at high speed.
Which is stupid and redundant given that most recent bluetooth standards (Bluetooth 3.0 + HS and more recent) can do it themselves ("Alternative MAC/PHY" - BT 3.0 do the hand shake on classic bluetooth, but then can re-use their wifi's 800.11 MAC/PHY to do high-speed transfers).
Which means that even ancient obsolete Apple devices like the iPhone 4S could do it.
Using OBEX on any more recent BT device achieves the exact same thing, and is a standard thus not needing any vendor proprietary incompatible extensions.
The only situation where the AirDrop kludge seems to make sense is in the home-built no-name beige-boxes, where Bluetooth and WiFi are handled by completely different extension modules (e.g.: a USB Bluetooth dongle and a PCIe Wifi card) and thus BT can't see/access the WiFi MAC/PHY.
(Happens also on a few older laptops my old Dell Latitude uses separate module for BT and Wifi. But lots of modern laptops tend to use combined Wifi + Bluetooth modules. It's not only for space saving, it also makes "Alternate MAC/PHY" work).
I'm quite annoyed that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all developing independent protocols for this though. I want an open protocol that works with all of my devices, not a mess of protocols where I can use one between my laptop and Android phone, one between my laptop and iPad, none between my iPad and Android phone, a different one between Windows devices, and so on.
...and you see where all this is going :
There is one such shared protocol, and it's called DropBox. Or Google Drive. Or iCloud. etc.
Basically, the manufacturer have low incentive in developing (or keeping, in the case of bluetooth OBEX) cross platform standard - because they let the user swap files for free. This eats into the profits of any cloud-storage solution. (DropBox "Pro" accounts, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I wonder what % of /. readers sees sees these "new feature" announcements as something to add to their ToDo list for blocking.
Anywhere that security is more than a passing fancy is going to se this as 2 things. A new improved attack vector and an inte5resting way to leak information. Was this an NSA idea?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
That's the problem with wireless file transfer: it's slow.
Almost a decade ago, Bluetooth introduced the 3.0 + HS revision of the standard, which included "Alternate MAC/PHY".
This enabled Bluetooth to using the 800.11 MAC/PHY used by WiFi to achieve faster transfert speed.
If both device supported it (e.g.: smartphone with combined radio chipsets, or laptop using combined Wifi+Bluetooth mini cards) it means fast transfer.
For large files I'll use USB and charge at the same time.
Depending on the combination of feature supported by the phone (e.g.: 800.11N dual or even AC, but only USB2.0 micro USB, the transfert over USB might end up not being that much faster).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The part that really gets me, is that it is 2017 and we are still do not have a good/secure standard to transfer files.
We have many options some are good but none of them are standardized across all systems and devices.
For this Air-Drop, it seems like they are all trying to make their own brand of air-drop utility Apple, Microsoft, Google. In hope that we will have our competing infrastructure build around the brand, vs built around which product suits our needs.
I may Like my Android Phone, Windows 10 PC, and a Apple Tablet. Or mix around brands and add other ones, to suit what you need or want. But they all have similar features that just don't talk to each other just for the reason that they want to be the standard that wins.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
More stuff to disable on the work computers around here, until they fix all the bugs and security issues. Then more questions from the users about "why can't we have that airdrop thing?" and more of me being the 'bad guy' by telling them 'no you can't have it'.
Since Windows is so good in the workgroup, why not just use the LAN!?
Wow, a whole new target for hacking. Bluetooth range is pretty variable - someone sitting in a conference room or a waiting room has a good chance of contacting a computer on the other side of the wall. Many users will be completely unaware that this feature even exists.
How long until the first hack?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I am as annoyed as anyone that none of these seem to interoperate. However, since AirDrop was introduced first (around 2011, it seems) and has the nice feature of using wifi mentioned above, wouldn't it make more sense for MS and Google to adopt that technology or something compatible?
Licensing headaches aside, of course...
A breakthrough of this magnitude is a faithful reflection of MS's prowess and innovation, especially in the mobile world.
Agreed, however if Microsoft do this right and provide support in iOS and Android then they'll have a solution which works for 100% of the mobile market and 83% of the desktop market.
This isn't so so great if you're the 17% on something else - but better than AirDrop today which only works on 13% of desktops and 18% of phones.
Now there was nothing to stop Apple (or even Google) doing the same - however they've had 5 years since AirDrop came out to do something ... but chose not to.
This is called the Microsoft instant we are the standard outlook. Microsoft comes late to the game, and their fans complain that Apple isn't compatible with Microsoft's late entry, and it's those damn hipsters at Apple's fault.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Some Apple fans might, but not me.
My point was more that Apple already provide Bonjour services for Windows (and have done for several years).
As such, there was no reason why, in the past 5 years, they couldn't have built and bundled in an AirDrop service for Windows too.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
A native tool for bridging air gaps, circumventing network ACLs, and connecting wireless to external/unmanaged devices.
I hope they don't forget to include a Group Policy setting to disable it. Bluetooth is bad enough on its own. I'd rather not deal with another chatty, proprietary network protocol.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Not necessarily if LiFi becomes a thing.
We do not need this now. Fix your shit. I am tired of not being able to search by extension when the OS decides to randomly change default program without reason or permission.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
IR Link was horrible
Horrible by today's standards, sure. But everything back then was horrible by today's standards. I used IR Link to sync my Palm and my old Powerbook. It worked well, and was no more or less fidgety than the serial port method that was the alternative. When sending something laptop-to-laptop, you did indeed need to line up the IR ports - but that was relatively simple compared to the alternatives:
1. Splitting your file into pieces to fit on a series of floppies.
2. Hooking the two laptops up with a serial cable, enabling Appletalk, setting up a share, and transferring the file.
3. Doing the same as above with ethernet, if you were both lucky enough to have ethernet cards of some form.
Cables have a very narrow field of view :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Shoot. I was just starting to like the new Microsoft after Windows 7 and the failure of gnome3 for a desktop OS (not server). Windows was finally stable, gorgeous, and after Balmer released .NET core for Linux, SQL Server for Linux, R for Linux, Microsoft Code, and included Python and Android emulators with Visual Studio.
Hell froze over and finally MS is getting with the times.
Windows 8.1 was fine if you had a start menu replacement which was annoying as hell, but lighter than 7 and ran much better with mobile battery life. Even IE is now usable and medocre from a previous abomination. Well my opinion changed with Windows 10. Not that I can't handle change as I think a Windows 8 tile in a start menu is what MS should have included with 8 and 10 got that right. I am not even complaining about Edge was is actually competitive with Firefox and Chrome in terms of compliance and plugins.
What pisses me off is Windows 10 is like a never ending beta. It seems they copied the Ubuntu style channels with current, current for business, and the really long term one which is more akin to Redhat. Things BREAK. Ivybridge ethernet cards are no longer supported out of the blue. Holy crap! Seriously INtel graphics don't have drivers too from 2012 era hardware if you update to the creators update. So now I need to buy 5,000 nvidia 710 GPUs and hire temps just to install them WTF.
I am re-imaging my workstation right now. Reason? The fall creators update can't get IPv4 addresses from my so called ancient 2014 era haswel Intel chepset 219 another WTF. My Server 2016 DCs on Windows 10 Hyper-V can't be promoted to a DC anymore without DFSLR failing with the fall update either complaining of a network error even though the VM can access the internet fine. As a test I installed an old copy of VMWare Workstation 11 and the test Server 2016 VM can be promoted to a domain controller just fine so I know it is not me or the hardware.
For a large corporation with 20,000 desktops from 2 vendors with 8 variations of models this is unacceptable and a nightmare to manage.
Don't get me wrong I LOVE the new updates as XP was ridiculous as it was 13 years old! But this is the other extreme. An enterprise endpoint is alot more complex than a cell phone. MS is treating Windows like an Android OS. Sometimes apps break all the time as a result of Android updates. But the kicker is at work the software is often ancient and is never ever updated and certainly not free.
Blowing money to rewrite Sap and hire guys replacing good hardware components because of driver model changes every 6 months is not business friendly. Infact, I would recommend sticking with Windows 7 at this point even though it is near EOL until Microsoft hires their QA department back (they eliminated in the name of Agile and put in telemetry and smily and frown faces instead). Windows 10 to me is for home PCs and vms in testing still 2 years later.
http://saveie6.com/
The main reason you want something else is that Bluetooth is a lot slower than WiFi. It's fine for individual small files, but if you want to send a video file between two devices, for example, then it's painfully slow. It's similarly slow if you want to copy a full album of music, or even a pile of PDFs. You want a protocol that can do the transfer over WiFi, though I seem to recall that there's a protocol for migrating Bluetooth connections to WiFi, which would work.
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I stopped needing Bluetooth file transfer when I got my DropBox account 10 years ago. Having access to my files everywhere is much simpler.
So when you want to give a file to the person right next to you, you first tell him to download dropbox, and then give him your account details to access the file. Yeah, makes sense.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
python -m http.server
OBEX started off on serial and IRDA and moved to Bluetooth. You could presumably run it over WiFi - e.g. encapsulate the packets into TCP/IP or UDP. I'm guessing done right - with the right windows size basically - you should be able to get close to the native speed of the WiFi connection.
There's a standard for OBEX over TCP/IP
https://books.google.com/books...
https://i.imgur.com/WhzUaDB.pn...
The problem would be how you'd balance convenience and security. With Bluetooth you need to pair. With Wifi you need to know the password for the network.
So what happens with OBEX over TCP/IP? Both devices would need to be on the same subnet, unless you had some sort of evil NAT avoiding technique to punch through to an external server. But is that what you really want? I.e. allowing anyone to read and write files on the device? OBEX doesn't have any security built in because it was designed for IRDA or Bluetooth where the security comes from proximity or pairing and usually a "This device is trying to connect? Allow once, allow always, deny" dialog. Run it over TCP/IP and you've got an unsecured way to read and write files and that seems dangerous. Even the dialog would be easy to fake unless you do SSL certificate verification which is fine for webservers but sucks for devices on the the same subnet.
Honestly I think I'll stick to SMB shares. The speed of those is limited by the storage device, not the network. You can saturate a Wifi connection with a cheap NAS. You get Wifi security, such as it is these days and you can password protect the shares. Obviously it's not ideal, but it's better than OBEX where you get no security with a naive OBEX over TCP/IP connection.
SFTP isn't too bad either. I like it because Macs listen by default and you have a certain amount of trust in the device identity because of SSH fingerprints. Also AndFTP has a nice Sync feature so you can sync a directory on an Android device with a Mac.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
And pay $PPLE a shit ton of money, or risk getting sued?
No risk if you do the reverse engineering of the protocol in the EU - which specifically allowed you to do that. See the UK Act: The Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations 1992, read 50B (2)(a)
Wait whatnow? They do? I'm so used to Apple pushing their proprietary stuff that I had given up even the notion that they'd try to maintain some level of compatibility with other manufacturers.
Oh, there it is, in the Bluetooth menu. Huh. Whodathunkit. Now if only they'd do the same thing in iOS. But I guess they're too busy turning people into smiling talking poop.
wouldn't it make more sense for MS and Google to adopt that technology or something compatible?
You mean like an open standard that allows products from different companies to interoperate? Apple doesn't license Airdrop or Airplay or Facetime because doing so would allow people to easily use devices from other manufacturers.
Yes, Bluetooth is very useful for dealing with old phones. But in this age of phones that capture 4K video, it's slower than a snail dragging a brick. So's IR. Same with NFC. We need either an entirely new wireless standard for this, or a standard that uses ad-hoc wifi like so many manufacturer-specific Android ones do.
Bluetooth simply isn't fast enough. A while ago I recorded a few minutes of 60 fps HD video on my Galaxy S7 and it was about 400 MB. I wanted to send it to my friend's Galaxy S5. I started up a Bluetooth transfer like I'm used to and wtf, 2 hours remaining?! So I tried S Beam and it was done inside of 30 seconds -- but it was only possible because we both happened to have Samsung phones.
We need an industry standard that works sort of like S Beam. Wifi is the only wireless technology found in all devices that's capable of the speeds needed. It should be a temporary ad-hoc wifi connection in order to remove the headaches of making sure both phones are connected to the same AP, finding a different AP if this one has client isolation, and the bandwidth hit from going through a relatively far away router to get to a device that's only inches away. Resuming on error would be nice, but apart from that it should be a pretty simple protocol that offers some files, sends them, and then stops.
SMB is not suitable -- too much fussing about with NETBIOS names, workgroups/domains, logins, share permissions, file permissions inside shares, some Android clients not working with Win10 hosts, etc. Then once you've got it working, it's great for a few big files but it's really slow for lots of small files. Besides, I'm not going to have some external SMB server I can drop files on when I'm at lunch with someone and want to share something with them.
Whether it's a new protocol, repurposed old one, or a proprietary one that becomes open and standardized, it needs to support a few key features if it's going to replace the current mess of USB cables, phones that only support MTP when connected to but only MSD to connect to another USB device, flash drives, OTG adapters, phones with no OTG support, incompatible proprietary systems, paid apps, transferring through a laptop, and profanities:
- Simple location and authentication with nearby devices. No pairing or logins should be needed. A simple one-use code, scanning a QR, or an NFC tap would be good options.
- Easy. It should be no more complex to use than telling one phone to share a file, the other to expect one, and then tapping them together (or entering or scanning a code, since not everything has NFC or a convenient camera).
- Fast. HD and 4K phone videos should be shareable in less time than it took to record them.
- Cross platform. The same system should be usable to send files from one PC to another, between phones, or between computers and phones. It's not a replacement for SMB shares or emailing files, just for point-to-point transfers in the same room.
You can share files without needing the app.
So what happens with OBEX over TCP/IP? Both devices would need to be on the same subnet, unless you had some sort of evil NAT avoiding technique to punch through to an external server.
Why do they need to be on the same subnet? If IP broadcasts are used for discovery, wouldn't it be sufficient to be in the same IP broadcast domain? I was not able to find anything about how OBEX handles discovery over IP.
I agree with other posters on this subject that file sharing between adjacent devices is much difficult than it should be. The smaller USB connectors found on handheld devices have poor or questionable long term reliability. I would consider IRDA ideal but it is deprecated. Bluetooth is no faster than the fastest IRDA standards and subject to RF interference.