mysterous issue

Hi, my son just bought a brand new laptop with windows 10 whilst staying at our house. He connected his laptop to our wifi connection. He took his laptop to his flat which is about 15 miles away, to his surprise his machine connected to his wifi without entering his password!! It is disconcerting to think that this is possible. He has Microsoft and Google accounts, but we never thought that either of them will store his wifi name and password. Any ideas for possible explanation.

Same SSID and password?

... or a friend's computer with Windows 10 has logged into the router at the flat and the password has been automatically shared with your son's computer? Doesn't need to be Windows 10, apparently.

Obviously, Microsoft have to store the passwords on their servers and I would imagine that the NSA will have a copy. Location data, SSID and bang, they're in. Enable remote management on the router, install hacked firmware and they can watch everything that happens via that router.

Edited by micksharpe (Mon 17-Aug-15 19:09:17)

I don't follow what happened. My son spent all week/end using his brand new laptop connected to my wifi. Then on Monday morning he went home and connected to his wifi and to his surprise his laptop connected automatically without entering his password !! It is sinister !!!

What computers has he used at his flat, and what version of windows is used?

You're right. It is sinister... and very convenient for the security services. Routers are very weakly protected devices and yet every wi-fi enabled device in a house uses them. Compromise the router and you compromise everything.

Edited by micksharpe (Mon 17-Aug-15 21:34:49)

In reply to a post by samulam:

Hi, my son just bought a brand new laptop with windows 10 whilst staying at our house. He connected his laptop to our wifi connection. He took his laptop to his flat which is about 15 miles away, to his surprise his machine connected to his wifi without entering his password!! It is disconcerting to think that this is possible. He has Microsoft and Google accounts, but we never thought that either of them will store his wifi name and password. Any ideas for possible explanation.

Have you got another laptop in the house running windows 10 that you have used at your sons house ? there is a feature on windows 10 that shares the passwords with other win 10 machines on same network.

Read here :-

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/07/01/windows-...

Dave

it could be that the other place has public wifi enabled and hence there is a default set for windows to use public wifi.


The only way to verify is to check what wifi the laptop was connected to in the other house.

Such as if both locations have BT broadband with BTOpenzone enabled.

Hi you are right. My son did have an old laptop which he upgraded to Win 10 for few days which he discarded due to hard disk failure, so he bought a new laptop and this new laptop was connected to his wifi without forwarding his password!!
Many thanks for your response.

Not meant to hijack this post, but can you disable this weird Windows 10's wireless connection feature so that it will be just like a plain old Windows 7 wireless authendication feature by using SSID and Password only???

Thanks

If you must