Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Jolly Roger Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: Hidden SSID is Security Risk? Date: 29 Sep 2016 21:56:14 GMT Organization: People for the Ethical Treatment of Pirates Lines: 36 Message-ID: References: <270920162120121208%star@sky.net> X-Trace: individual.net 6kTkGUfa1LJIQy2dx50FrwDn/AD0kYAWLTh0DBTFiGMGl4gduq Cancel-Lock: sha1:qWU10jk3P1XQCEld/3GZxgM4IKI= Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: slrn/1.0.1 (Darwin) Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.mac.system:94945 On 2016-09-29, Jolly Roger wrote: > On 2016-09-29, Happy.Hobo wrote: >> On 09-28-2016 19:20, Jolly Roger wrote: >>> Yes, and because of that, it's quite silly for that purpose. I can se >>> hiding your SSID to discourage relative novices from trying to connect; >>> but you'd have to be naive to think it is in any way protection from >>> people who are knowledgeable about networking. >> >> If you don't have anything to hide, the snoops aren't go to bother. > > That's foolish reasoning. With the vast dearth of oversight into how > police departments and other government agencies are gathering and using > data about innocent citizens without due cause or court order, if it can > be abused, it likely is (or will be) abused, as Edward Snowden and > others have already shown the public. > >> So the hidden SSID would have the small benefit of keeping the kiddies >> from wasting your bandwidth. > > No. Hiding the SSID only discourages the most casual users from seeing > and connecting. s/and connecting// > It doesn't prevent anyone know knows anything from > seeing the network, and it *definitely* has *nothing* to do with > preventing anyone from connecting - that's what strong encryption (WPA2, > etc) does. s/connecting/authenticating/ -- E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter. I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead. JR