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June 12, 2006

Microsoft's WPA2 Support Lags, Is Lacking

By Glenn Fleishman

eWeek writes that Microsoft has been tardy in adding WPA2 support: The company sits on the board of the Wi-Fi Alliance, and yet has seemed relatively indifferent to corporate and government interests in having the strongest form of Wi-Fi link layer security available across its platforms and management systems. Andrew Garcia notes that Windows 2003 still doesn’t offer WPA2 support—it will arrive with Service Pack 2—and that the early look at it within Longhorn Server shows it needs more work.

Garcia notes that system managers can’t use the Group Policy tool to control WPA2 authentication settings for Windows XP Service Pack 2 clients that have added WPA2 support. XP SP2 allows WPA2 as an optional upgrade, too.

The writer takes Microsoft to task for continuing to support just PEAP, its preferred flavor for 802.1X authentication. He notes that it would be nice to see EAP-TTLS, PEAP/EAP-GTC, and EAP-SIM, authentication flavors supported through an optional certification process at the Wi-Fi Alliance.

At one point, I thought Microsoft chose PEAPv0 as a defensive measure and a way to ensure use of their server software. But since most clients and servers now support most secured EAP methods, it’s a little silly for Microsoft to stick to one option: there’s no advantage for them, and it restricts customer choice.

Posted by Glennf at June 12, 2006 11:01 AM

Categories: Security

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