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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @09:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-are-really-security-conscious dept.

According to The Register Microsoft plans to enable their WIFI Sense feature on all versions of Windows 10 by default.

WIFI Sense has been lurking on Windows Phones since version 8.1.

A Windows 10 feature, Wi-Fi Sense, smells like a significant security risk: it shares access to password-protected Wi-Fi networks with the user's contacts. So giving a wireless password to one person grants access to everyone who knows them. That includes their Outlook.com (nee Hotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, their Facebook friends.

With every laptop running Windows 10 in the business radiating access, the security risk is significant. A second issue is that by giving Wi-Fi Sense access to your Facebook contacts, you are giving Microsoft a list of your Facebook friends, as well as your wireless passwords.

Microsoft offers a totally ridiculous workaround: you can simply add _optout to the SSID to prevent it from working with WiFi Sense.

Microsoft's page on WIFI Sense hasn't yet made it clear that every Windows 10 computer using WIFI will have the feature on by default. But that page does also include this little gem:

Wi-Fi Sense uses your location to identify open networks near you that it knows about by crowdsourcing.

Where are the lawyers when you need them?


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  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday July 01 2015, @04:15PM

    by DECbot (832) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @04:15PM (#203813) Journal

    Bob visits Alice's house. Since Bob is in Alice's contacts and Bob and Alice both use Microsoft products, Bob now has access to Alice's WiFi--whether she explicitly shared it to him or not (remember, it's opt-out, not opt-in). Martin is Bob's bar friend, and so he is in Bob's contacts to coordinate drinking nights. Unknown to Bob, Martin does questionable things with the internet. Since Alice's WiFi password is in Bob's computer and Martin is in Bob's contacts, Alice's WiFi password gets shared to Martin. Now Martin uses Alice's WiFi to attract the Fed's attention and Alice get a unwelcome notice from the Fed.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:22PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:22PM (#203843) Journal

    And you totally missed the part of the bar buddy living one floor up from Alice, and therefore having free wifi for life at Alice's expense, and access to her shared music and video collection on her NAS box Public folder. And bar buddy doesn't even have to know Alice/

    This is totally different than Comcast's sharing part of your wifi using a separate Vlan to any other Comcast customer, because theoretically all it takes is a tiny bit of extra electricity, and exposes none of your data. (allegedly).

    Microsoft's plan just plops you on to other people's WIFI subnet, where you can run up anyone's bill downloading porn, shooting out spam, or hacking the WIFI owner's other computers from the next apartment.

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  • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:05PM

    by Leebert (3511) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:05PM (#203902)

    Is the transitive relationship unlimited? I don't know how it works, but if I were implementing something like this, I'd limit the sharing to one degree of separation from the person who actually entered the key. Otherwise, Kevin Bacon would have all of our Wifi pre-shared keys by the end of the week.