What's the status of WPS on wireless routers these days?

A couple of months ago, I needed to connect my Sony BluRay player to my WiFi, and wasn't intrigued by the hunt and peck method of entering my WPA passphrase, so I tried the buton that said WPS. The Sony message told me to press the WPS button on my router, a recent vintage Netgear N150 from Target. By the time I returned to the room where the Sony is located, my connection was established, and I haven't needed to do anything since.

Is that how it's supposed to work ;-)

As originally planned, yes. Unfortunately, it takes all of a few hours, if that, for someone other than you to do exactly the same thing, and either get into your network, or use your internet connection for their own purposes.

Maybe you will be lucky and it will be the latter, and all they'll be doing is reading the news and checking stock reports.

Jon

Supposedly all the routers other than Apple (believe it or not) have the WPS hack. Hey Apple was bound to get something right.

So the status is don't use WPS.

That's how it's supposed to work. What it's not supposed to allow, however, is the capability for an intruder to get onto your wireless network relatively easily.

Once you're done with WPS, turn it off. If you can, that is.

Sure, but that's only because Apple routers don't support WPS at all. Flip the switch on any other router (assuming the firmware bothers to disable WPS when you turn it off) and you're in the same place as Apple users.

That's my problem. Just set up a Netgear N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR4300 -- sounds impressive doesn't it? But, you can't turn off WPS without turning off the router. Anyone know how to make this unit work securely? Thanks.

riserman

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I re(call/member) some routers still had this vulnerability even if it is disabled!

Ask Netgear? They will probably say to buy a new one if it is old. :( Can it do third party firmwares?

Alas it is a new model! Not sure what you mean by third party firmwares. Please explain.

riserman