Mon
Dec
13
Waterloo wireless security
“All users of ‘uw-wireless’ should switch to using ‘eduroam’, as soon as possible, to avoid disruption in service. ‘eduroam’ offers a higher level of security, and can be used at other participating universities in Canada.”—
I am amused by the fact that this is now being portrayed as a significant security problem, when for years the official answer was that it wasn’t worth the overhead to encrypt wireless connections, and that users should be using secure versions of websites anyway. I actually think that the reasoning at the time was sound (WEP is easily cracked, WPA wasn’t widely available as an encryption method, and encryption slows down the connection, thus encryption isn’t worth it), but it’s funny how we ignore security issues like this because we don’t have a better answer, and then raise alarm bells as soon as we do.
