iOS 15 Hotspot Connections Feature Stronger WPA3 Security

[RobArtLyn]

Apple should re-route “efforts” elsewhere. Who cares of strong security on a hotspot used for few minutes on a phone that most of time its in front of you and shows u the number of connected devices?

Isnt easier to add an option to limit number of connected devices? 1 device limit = once i connect with my pc, no more other devices can even attempt to connect to the hotspot. In this case its enough even a no-password access....

This is not about surreptitiously connecting to your hotspot. It’s about sniffing the traffic between the hotspot and devices that are connected.

 

[Damian83]

This is not about surreptitiously connecting to your hotspot. It’s about sniffing the traffic between the hotspot and devices that are connected.

ok now it makes sense

 

[4491275]

Wifi hotspot got self disconnected all the time. I mean, many times they disconnect right in the middle of me downloading something or loading a webpage. The range is ok but not great, and taking device around sometimes just break the hotspot even though there is no obstacle between devices.
I only pickup wifi hotspot recently cause my iPhone could not connect to computer anymore, and it is still bad.

Sounds like something else going on. I don’t know of anyone else with those kinds of troubles. Could it be WiFi interference in some of those places causing the disconnects? I’ve honestly never had anything like that happen with any devices I’ve used my hotspot on for many years. Hope you find a solution. That would be frustrating for sure.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

5GHz + WPA3 for hotspots, nice improvements. It's a shame WPA3 is a bit of a mess and there's already tools out to crack it. The WiFi alliance really needed to do a ground up rethink of wireless security and encryption just like how 802.11ax introduced some fundamental changes to make WiFi work better and more efficiently.

Even if tools crack WPA2 or WPA3, apps use TLS and Apple forces apps to use TLS.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

When will Apple update Time Capsule & Airport to support WPA3?!

WPA3 is not necessary. A strong SSID name and WPA2 password is enough. OpenSSL can generate strong passwords.

In a Terminal window:

SSID name:

sudo openssl rand 9 -base64

WPA2 password:

sudo openssl rand 45 -base64

 

[bn-7bc]

Apple needs to roll this out for Airport Routers. Which were still being sold in 2018.

Apple have developed most of the code already for their devices. They need to support this security essential.

Well as good as apple is with reagard to supporypting eol'ed gear the whole airport line was discontinued over 3 years ago, so the chances might be on the low side but we can allways hope

 

[hagar]

Nice of them to upgrade it, but on a larger note, anyone else feel like MacRumors has been a little over the top with iOS15, iPadOS15 and Monterey posts lately? Just collect all the features and break them down in a few articles. I love MR, but this is getting out of hand.

You’re lucky this comment wasn’t censured. They love doing that with comments that question their editorial choices.

 

[hagar]

Apple should re-route “efforts” elsewhere. Who cares of strong security on a hotspot used for few minutes on a phone that most of time its in front of you and shows u the number of connected devices?

So you don’t mind if someone can hack your hotspot in a public spot and use up all your data while your phone is in your pocket?

 

[_Spinn_]

More security is always good.

 

[cmaier]

WPA3 is not necessary. A strong SSID name and WPA2 password is enough. OpenSSL can generate strong passwords.

In a Terminal window:

SSID name:

sudo openssl rand 9 -base64

WPA2 password:

sudo openssl rand 45 -base64

Strong password does you no good if during key exchange it is intercepted. That’s why WPA3 uses SAE.

So, yes, WPA3 is necessary, if you care about security of your networking.

 

[Reason077]

Yeah, definitely not family’s experience. It’s solid as far as our usage goes. Never had it randomly disconnect.

One big issue that it used to have is that it would only work on 2.4 Ghz WiFi. That meant that if the 2.4 Ghz band was congested (dense city, cafe with lots of people using hotspots, etc) it could be pretty slow and unreliable.

I think they've fixed that recently by adding 5 Ghz support, but I wouldn't know because I've since bought a dedicated 5G portable WiFi router that I'm very happy with! In fact it's so good it's totally replaced my wired home broadband.

 

[Damian83]

So you don’t mind if someone can hack your hotspot in a public spot and use up all your data while your phone is in your pocket?

public spot...phone in the pocket hotspotting to another device...never been in such situation

 

[hagar]

public spot...phone in the pocket hotspotting to another device...never been in such situation

Because there are security measures installed. That’s what this is about. Bolstering security so this can’t happen In the future.

 

[Damian83]

Because there are security measures installed. That’s what this is about. Bolstering security so this can’t happen In the future.

macos is the "bug's festival" and it's present. future can only go worse if actual trend will continue. so i dont care of wpa3 "feature" if for every new feature there will be 10 new bugs or other useful features removed

 

[afd]

Up until last week I used my iPhone’s hotspot to connect an Apple TV 3, after upgrading to iOS 15 it stopped working. Is this because an ATV3 can’t connect to WPA3? I have tried the compatibility with older devices option and it didn’t work either.

 

[iccb]

Up until last week I used my iPhone’s hotspot to connect an Apple TV 3, after upgrading to iOS 15 it stopped working. Is this because an ATV3 can’t connect to WPA3? I have tried the compatibility with older devices option and it didn’t work either.

I guess yes. I'm having similar problems with ATV3 and Chromecast2. I would love to see option to turn wpa3 off..

 

[zorinlynx]

Up until last week I used my iPhone’s hotspot to connect an Apple TV 3, after upgrading to iOS 15 it stopped working. Is this because an ATV3 can’t connect to WPA3? I have tried the compatibility with older devices option and it didn’t work either.

This is likely due to a bug in some older WPA2 based devices that keep them from connecting to a "WPA2/WPA3 Transitional" network.

I had this same issue connecting an old ATV3 to my new Asus access point when I set it up in WPA2/WPA3 Transitional mode. Other old WPA2 devices can connect, but due to a bug in the ATV3's WiFi code, it can't connect. I suspect the same issue is happening with it trying to connect to your iPhone's hotspot, which now uses WPA2/WPA3 transitional mode.

My solution with the Asus access point was to split out the 2.4GHz network and set it to use WPA2 authentication only. Then I put my ancient devices like the ATV3, an old TiVo and such on the 2.4GHz network. All the modern stuff lives on the 5GHz network which uses 2/3 transitional. Sadly I don't think you can set what mode the iPhone's hotspot is using.

One thing that makes me sad about the ATV3 in particular is that Apple has released a few security updates for the old ATV3 in the past couple of years, so they could have released a fix for the WPA2/WPA3 connection bug. But they did not. ATV3's are still useful as AirPlay targets; they should have fixed this issue. Oh well, time marches on I guess.

 

[barracuda156]

With all marketing blah-blah-blah in practice their update broke hotspot for all MacOSX <10.7