Routers & Other Networking Stuff

It appears WPA2 has a huge flaw in it.

Severe flaw in WPA2 protocol leaves Wi-Fi traffic open to eavesdropping

Araxen said:

It appears WPA2 has a huge flaw in it.

Severe flaw in WPA2 protocol leaves Wi-Fi traffic open to eavesdropping

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Yeah this is bad. When WEP was cracked, they at least had a standard ready to go. WPA2 being cracked is bad. This is only for the handshake portion of WPA2 though, correct? Is AES encryption affected at all?

Flipmode said:

Yeah this is bad. When WEP was cracked, they at least had a standard ready to go. WPA2 being cracked is bad. This is only for the handshake portion of WPA2 though, correct? Is AES encryption affected at all?

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It seems everything is vulnerable to one of the attacks.

New article up: How the KRACK attack destroys nearly all Wi-Fi security

Yeah this is both cool and not cool at the same time. I am continually in awe of the minds that come up with these mechanisms to put chinks in the armor of technology we've woven around us, but this could potentially be a headache and a half. Since I pass through Kendall Square on my way home I'm turning WiFi off on my android phone for the commute home. There's always some jokester at M.I.T. looking to futz with zero-day vulnerabilities and such.

Hmmm if Microsoft already, quietly, patched this vulnerability on Oct 10th then why is Google seemingly being caught flat footed on this? Are they not part of the same 'industry insider circle' that such things get shared with?

Article I was reading said a new standard isn't needed. This vulnerability can be fixed via software / firmware patching. Shouldn't be a big deal as long as you update.

Microsoft fixed the Wi-Fi WPA2 vulnerability in Windows a week ago

Here's every patch for KRACK Wi-Fi vulnerability available right now

This krack attack seems like it is going to be affecting things for years if not decades if manufacturers don't release patches for all the devices, like fridges and door locks.

just got an asus ac86u. Seems like an excellent router for $200.
Some specs:
3x3 2.4ghz 450 Mbps/750 Mbps 1024-qam
4x4 5ghz 1734 Mbps/2167 Mbps 1024-qam

No issues with stability so far in a house with a 6-10 devices active at peak times.

It's got the same broadcom wireless chipset (BCM4366E) as the stupidly excessive gt-ac5300. This chipset supposedly fixes MU-MIMO which was basically nonfunctional on the previous broadcom chipset BCM4366 (ac88u and rt-ac5300)--not that MU-MIMO really does anything anyway--and supposedly has a feature that increases range compared to the broadcom chipset. We have a bunch of lathe and plaster walls and the signal is definitely strong despite that.

I recently purchased an Eero mesh network kit. I previously had spotty coverage and mediocre bandwidth (50 Mpbs) in the back of my house though a powerline ethernet adapter and D-Link WAP and was looking for a better solution. (I'm renting and can't run cables.)

The product design was great and installation was easy. Unfortunately, the fact that Eero requires broadcasting 2.4 and 5.0 ghz networks on the same SSID combined with some vagary of the meshing behavior completely fucked the connectivity of my Sonos wifi speaker setup and robot vacuum. Additionally, something about the network swap resulted in a permanently corrupted network configuration on my FreeNAS media server, requiring me to do a fresh install of the OS. After doing so, I discovered that online updates could not work properly and I couldn't install plugins or make jails to restore basic functionality.

Needless to say, after two full days of problems and troubleshooting nearly every internet-connected device in my house this steaming pile is going right back to Amazon.

Dandai said:

I’ve got some security cameras that I can no longer view remotely because I’ve put a network switch between them and my router. I’m quite certain updating the network configuration on the recorder will fix the loss of access, but I’m not sure how to get the ip and dns gateway info now that I’ve added a switch.

If one of you network savvy gents could point me in the right direction, I’d really appreciate it.

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If you bought an actual switch (IE, not another router), your gateway won't change; that will still be controlled by the original router. If you bought an additional router for some reason then take it back and get a switch, or turn off routing functions in the router you bought (should be possible in almost any device these days).

What likely happened is they just have new IPs, but you should be able to look that up via your main router.

I was planning on going with ubiquiti gear for my new network stuff, but instead opted for eero. Since I dont have ethernet cable routed through my house, in order to get the same coverage with ubiquiti I would have had to pair powerline adapters with the ubiquiti WAPs. I have two gripes with the eero: the interface doesn't let me do much and the physical ports suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. It's got 2 ports on it, I thought they were a switch. But they function more like WAN ports on a router. That's annoying. Still using powerline adapters for my main PC which host my Plex and for my lab server/SAN, which are right now connecting directly to the dogshit FIOS switch. Next year I want to replace that damn thing. But, good news is, eero totally resolved any wireless issues within my house.

chaos said:

I was planning on going with ubiquiti gear for my new network stuff, but instead opted for eero. Since I dont have ethernet cable routed through my house, in order to get the same coverage with ubiquiti I would have had to pair powerline adapters with the ubiquiti WAPs. I have two gripes with the eero: the interface doesn't let me do much and the physical ports suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. It's got 2 ports on it, I thought they were a switch. But they function more like WAN ports on a router. That's annoying. Still using powerline adapters for my main PC which host my Plex and for my lab server/SAN, which are right now connecting directly to the dogshit FIOS switch. Next year I want to replace that damn thing. But, good news is, eero totally resolved any wireless issues within my house.

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And not but a few posts up the dude was ripping on eero saying it was trash. Weird.

Yeah, idk, zero issues with the wireless. It's a huge step up from dogshit FIOS router and 10 year old linksys running dd-wrt. The linksys radio for the 5 ghz actually went apeshit at one point a few months ago and I had to turn it off, it was just dominating everything in the house and basically DoSing my network.

The only issue I've had is with the physical ports, which is resolved by putting a switch directly off the physical port and running to that, which imo is dumb. Well, that and the lack of support for VLAN tagging and other more advanced options. That sucks, but I dont have that much iot stuff anyway so it isn't a major deal. My goal was to get consistent wireless across the house, it worked.

Dandai said:

I'm simple and work better with pictures, so here's a rough sketch of what I'm working with:

View attachment 156422

All of devices/ips I see on my router are identified except one "Unknown". I adjusted the DVR's settings to that IP to no avail.

The switch is solving a wifi signal strength problem. It was free and on hand, so if there's a better (or simpler) solution, I'm all for it.

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What a_skeleton_03 said. That's a hot mess. And by hot mess I mean not really, but it's very odd to see your modem not go straight to your router.