which do you think is safer: ssid broadcast on or off?

What information? This is simply a name. It is NOT a layer of security. It is NOT a passphrase or password.

Again, this is no more than McDonalds lighting up their signs. Whether lit or not, anyone "interested" in targeting McDonalds will already know where McDonalds is located.

 

Another excellent post from a highly regarded member on why disabling ssid is pointless...

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=748654&postcount=22

 

Which, as I tried to draw attention to earlier, might be *descriptive*. For example, an SSID can be XYZCorpBioLab3 or LocalJoesBar or SomeTownLexus or MSKCC_Chemo5 or ABCRetirementHomeDeli. So imagine someone who uses a portable device to connect to various APs (SSIDs) and due to its configuration/use it will actively probe for those APs (transmit the SSIDs in probe requests). If you are sniffing when that device is searching... transmitting those probe requests and SSID names... you can acquire information about the person's life. If the person happens to be an employee of a company you are interested in, you theoretically might acquire some information about what goes on within a building you otherwise have no access to.

 

That information is broadcasted anyway. Regardless if you have SSID broadcasting enabled or not.

 

If you mean a client will transmit the SSID of the AP it is trying to connect to, I agree. So even if you can fully prevent your AP from transmitting its own SSID, an adversary can get your AP's SSID from a client. At least IF the adversary knows this and IF they use the appropriate tools and IF they are around when a client is talking to your AP.

If your AP doesn't transmit its SSID and make the client aware of its presence, then the client must actively probe for it. Which is fine as long as the probing happens when you are in range of your AP and actually want to connect to it. If it happens at other times and/or places, you are transmitting information you don't need to. Which led me to the recent posts and what might be revealed if your device actively probes (multiple SSIDs) at the wrong times.

FWIW, I played around with a Windows 7 notebook with Intel wireless. The only way I could get it to send a probe request to an SSID that wasn't around was to enable the "Connect even if the network is not broadcasting its name (SSID)" option. Which is kind of what I expected. If there is some other way, do tell.

I also did a quick search to dig up what has been mentioned on this related subject in the past. Here is an interesting link from a year ago regarding Apple devices: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/03/anatomy-of-an-iphone-leak/. I have no idea whether anything has changed in that regard and don't have any to play with to verify behavior.

 

I am not buying that at all. You are trying to use an extreme case exception to the norm, a highly unlikely example to make an invalid point. And it is invalid because the SSID does NOT contain, or lead to any information about a person's life - unless that person was so ignorant he included personal information as part of the SSID name, or if the person runs an Internet café and wants his customers to connect with minimal hassles.

Plus - so what? Knowing that is Joe's bar does NOT tell me Joe's last name, where he lives, his bank account, and knowing that is Joe's bar does NOT make it any easier to hack Joe's network!

So what? I mean, geez whiz. If, if, if! But so what? IF I am at McDonalds and my notebook is searching for Joe's Bar, that IN NO WAY is telling a badguy ANY information about me!

I can get a whole lot more information about a person by looking them up in the phone book - or doing a reverse look-up of their phone number, or looking up publicly available property records at the county courthouse based on their street address.

Let's be clear about one thing. My background as an electronics technician is based on a career of fixing air traffic control radio systems. I know RF. And much of my career in later years was maintaining the highest of secure networks. Consequently, I know there is no way a wireless (RF) network will ever be more secure than a wired network, nor can a wireless network be hidden, unless turned completely off.

SSID is NOT a security feature. The RF is still there and anyone with a soup can can make a simple, but highly effective directional antenna to pinpoint the physical location of your WAP - and that's a security issue.

If concerned about maintaining the ultimate in security, go Ethernet.

If you must use wireless, change the defaults to a strong passphrase and non-descriptive SSID (if you don't want wannabes matching your network to you), and use the highest encryption your client devices will allow.

If you have mixed devices on your wireless side, get a simultaneous dual-band router that does not compromise security to all your devices to support less secure devices.

 

Who on earth other than maybe secret service looking for a terrorist is sniffing wifi to gain personal information from someone That's mostly nonsense. People doing that are just looking for free wifi and will latch on to unsecured wireless ap's.

 

You and I are in the same legal jurisdiction. So I should mention that it is Illegal in Federal Law here to piggy back on someone elses wi fi. Even if it is 'easy" to do it and even if it is not enforced. I have 2 clients who suffered at the hands of a neighbour using their connect for porn. I fixed their connection to block that for them.

This IMHO cannot be brushed aside as not important. Not that anybody here said that.

 

That's what I mean, that people sniffing wifi are looking for free service, even though it's illegal, but if caught latching on to an unsecured network they would likely claim innocence, saying they didn't notice it wasn't their own if it was, instead, their next door neighbor's.

 

Right! In many cases, it is just folks with no malicious intent, looking for free Internet access. But badguys looking to hack wireless networks do it so they can use your network (your assigned IP) to send spam, distribute porn, distribute malware, or participate in a DDoS attack - making it look like you are the offender.

Note that stealing access to someone else's Internet connection is called, "theft of services" and it certainly is illegal - both to take it, and to provide it knowingly.

I say again, use Ethernet then none of this matters.

 

I used to feel the same way, but nowadays with so many people using laptops and other wifi-capable device like tabs and phones (we now have 5 of those devices in our household ) makes wifi access an absolute necessity for them.

 

I think it reasonable to assume that most of the people who perform some level of wireless sniffing do so in order to find an AP and acquire Internet access through it. Which in some cases would be legitimate and in some cases would not be. However, there are other realistic possibilities which would include:

- Assessing the environment and configuring equipment
- Testing/debugging equipment
- Curiosity and education, learning about wireless protocols
- Security/privacy research, pentesting, assessing the prevalence of various issues
- Prank related
- Nosy neighbors, friends, others
- Stalking
- Corporations gathering info for databases, tracking/profiling people for market research and/or advertising purposes, etc
- Casing, gathering info for penetration attempts
- Espionage, industrial and/or state
- Law enforcement, counter espionage

and I think we can safely assume that each and every one of those is actually happening in the real world.

FWIW, I did some more search engine work and asked around a little bit. It seems that the configuration of wireless clients to automatically connect *and* connect even when the AP is not broadcasting is fairly common. AFAICT, a significant percentage of IT departments within companies, universities, etc are explicitly configuring clients with those settings and/or explicitly instructing users to do so. Plus, at least some end-users use those connection settings as a reference when configuring connection settings for other APs including their home unit.

 

Exactly. Hopefully, the only people who would enable that did their homework and know what they are doing. As always, it illustrates the fact the user is always the weakest link, when it comes to security.