Computers & Hardware > Apple Related

iOS12 password sharing

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Weaver:
I read something about a new feature in ios12 where a user can send a saved website password to another machine, by using airdrop I think. But can you send a saved wireless LAN password as well?

displaced:
I think WLAN password sharing’s been around since iOS 11.

I changed my home WiFi password a while back. When my brother-in-law visited and started using his phone, my phone prompted me to ask if I wanted to share the credential with him.

Of course, it only did so because I have his iCloud email address against him in my contacts app.

Quite nifty, all told.

Weaver:
How does that work, exactly?

displaced:
Hmmm. I can find lots of stuff about how to use it, but little on how it works.

I imagine the initial handshake must be over Bluetooth LE owing to the fact they’re not yet on the same WiFi network and that the devices need to be in reasonably close proximity.

It probably goes something like:

“Hey, I’m trying to join SOMENET but don’t know the password”
“I know it. Who are you?”
“I’m foo@icloud.com”
“OK, I know you - you’re in my contacts list. Let me ask my user if they want to let you know the password...
...Yep. Here you go!”

Of course, there’s no doubt a ton of key-exchange going on.  All iCloud leans on PKI quite heavily, so the real conversation isn’t really so naive.

Weaver:
I should have asked how does one use it too.

I need to make sure that effectively no one succeeded with this without my authorisation. When I read about a similar Microsoft thing, I used their disable mechanism of suffixing __optout on the end if the SSID. But in this case, I have MAC filtering as a next-level block too, to aid in frustrating such things. (And I do know that MAC addresses can be altered or spoofed.) Unless someone is on the MAC whitelist they can only join the guest SSID and having a WLAN password is not enough for the main SSIDs.

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