Wi-Fi Alliance Says New Certification Can Protect Open Networks

[thiggins]

The Wi-Fi Alliance on Tuesday announced Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Enhanced Open, a certification program that provides improved security in open Wi-Fi networks.

Wi-Fi Enhanced Open provides protection where user authentication is not desired or distribution of credentials is impractical, such as in coffee shops, airports, hotels and sports arenas.

Wi-Fi Enhanced Open provides protections against passive eavesdropping without requiring a password or extra steps to join the network. Based on the Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE) standard (RFC 8110), Wi-Fi Enhanced Open provides each user with unique individual encryption that protects data exchange between a user device and the Wi-Fi network.

OWE uses some of the same underlying cryptography developed for the Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), which was previously included in the IEEE 802.11s standard and is in the process of being incorporated into WPA3.

The Alliance did not say when Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Enhanced Open certification would begin.

[Press release]

 

[umarmung]

Nice protection against passive attacks, but does nothing against active attacks.

I guess this feature must be really in demand for public hotspots from vendors and their non-consumer customers for them to carve it out separately from WPA3.

 

[thiggins]

I guess this feature must be really in demand for public hotspots from vendors and their non-consumer customers for them to carve it out separately from WPA3.

Making it separate also creates another revenue source...

 

[RAVI RADHAKRISHNAN]

How does roaming going to work with this OWE ? Say in controller based networks