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"Your Wireless network has been compromised..." Ack! Help!

T

thenewguy

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 25, 2006
203
0
Hey guys.

So over the past few months I have been sporadically getting the following message in a pop up dialogue window:

"Your wireless network appears to have been compromised and will be shut down for approximately a minute"

It then shuts down my airport, and if I try to reconnect it says there was an error unless I wait for over a minute and then (usually!) it will reconnect. Sometimes it won't reconnect at all and I need to reboot. Often this message happens once and then not again for days. but today it has been happening basically ever 5-10 minutes. quite irritating.

I found the following thread at macosxhints about it: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=26414

I couldn't really find any answers, and I'm stumped.

I'm using a Trendnet router, which was mentioned in that thread, but again, I couldn't find any further info on that, and there seemed to have been multiple router brands involved.

Any ideas? Thanks all.
 
mrogers said:
Well, here's an important question: are you using any sort of security on your wireless router?
Click to expand...

Good question, lol.

I am looking at the settings page now, and "authentication type" is set to "WPA-PSK". Cipher type is TKIP (the other option is AES), and then it has my password.

any ideas?
 
thenewguy said:
Good question, lol.

I am looking at the settings page now, and "authentication type" is set to "WPA-PSK". Cipher type is TKIP (the other option is AES), and then it has my password.

any ideas?
Click to expand...

I have heard that AES is still fairly susceptible to dictionary attacks. Make sure that you use a strong pass-phrase, not just a word. I use a 63 character random password from http://grc.com/password.html
 
I changed the password and so far so good.

So what did that message mean? What was happening?
 
thenewguy said:
I changed the password and so far so good.

So what did that message mean? What was happening?
Click to expand...

It could be a bug in someone's implementation of the Michael algorithm (used to generate Message Integrity Codes in 802.11 frames), or it could have been a case of someone trying to hack into your network using something called a Replay Attack.

A replay attack is when 802.11 frames which have been 'sniffed' out of the air by a malicious hacker are re-injected into the network. Replay attacks were very effective in breaking WEP network's, but do not work well with WPA because of the way Message Integrity Codes are computed.
 
Same warning for me

I had the same dialog box appear. It was when I brought home my laptop from work and connected to my wireless at home that it happened my router did not shut down because the wireless on work laptop (IBM Thinkpad) worked it just disabled airport in my Alu mac. I had to use a VPN connection to get on to my work server so maybe thats what happened to cause the warning.

Sorry to bring up an old boring thread again, just wanted to make some input to this forum instead of only reading.
 
A fix posted by VMware

thenewguy said:
Hey guys.

So over the past few months I have been sporadically getting the following message in a pop up dialogue window:

"Your wireless network appears to have been compromised and will be shut down for approximately a minute"

....

I found the following thread at macosxhints about it: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=26414

I couldn't really find any answers, and I'm stumped.
.....

Any ideas? Thanks all.
Click to expand...

If you are using VMware Fusion and having this problem, then go here for a fix:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/115905?tstart=0&start=0

Richard
 
bericd said:
I have heard that AES is still fairly susceptible to dictionary attacks. Make sure that you use a strong pass-phrase, not just a word. I use a 63 character random password from http://grc.com/password.html
Click to expand...

How can those random passwords be in any way useful to you? You'll have to input that password every time you log on the network. Do you have it copy and paste-ready somewhere? What if you want to log on with a different computer? Must be a uber-pain in the ass to type it all out.
 
Use AES to stop "wireless network appears to have been compromised" messages

Randomly ran across this post during a search for the problem online. It looks like the solution isn't so much WPA2 versus WEP as it is choosing the AES encryption method instead of TKIP. Some routers allow you to choose - TKIP seems to cause problems during periods of heavy use. (I was having the problem while using a Linksys WRT54Gv8 with DD-WRT installed. It would show up most often while using Skype. Switching from TKIP to AES solved the problem immediately.)

Good luck!
 
escalation

HI, I have also had this as a long term intermittent problem, (once a month) - I recently had to do a partial reinstall of osx 10.4 and now had this warning and disconnection pop up 15 times in a day, any time anything else connected to the network (mac - dell - or printer) this comes up and now its almost constant -

HELP - -

nothing else on the network has changed.


Cheers
 
"Wireless network has been compromised" NEW MACBOOK PRO wireless issues

After about an hour or so. (usually unpredictable) my internet cuts out and a message appears saying that: 'Your wireless network has been compromised and will now disconnect.' (paraphrased) It takes a couple of minutes to re-connect and if you try and reconnect manually in this time then it doesn't work.
I have never had this problem with my old Ibook G4 (on the same wireless network) and none of my flat mates have an issue on their computers (Pc's)
Does anyone know the reason for this?? Anyone else found this same problem?? I have clean installed OSX (which i was going to do anyway) and it hasn't helped.
Thanks
 
On my Netgear firmware download release notes page, I noticed this:

"RECOMENDED - Please use “WPA2-ONLY security” instead of “WPA+WPA2 mix mode” on GUI router setting. This will prevent that the client from using incorrect WPA (TKIP) packet transmission error; the fail will trigger router 802.11 function - MIC failure. So, it can be fixed if you just select WPA2-only and has better security mode."

Which a previous poster mentioned would trigger the message we saw. I switched to WPA2 and so far so good. We'll see.
 
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