Turning off your SSID is dumb

Cory Doctorow 7:18 pm Wed Dec 10, 2003

Good, short white-paper explains why turning off your WiFi access point's SSID broadcast is not only bad for security, it's also bad for performance.

Contrary to a common belief that the SSID is a WLAN security feature and its exposure a security risk, the SSID is nothing more than a wireless-space group label. It cannot be successfully hidden. Attempts to hide it will not only fail, but will negatively impact WLAN performance, and may result in additional exposure of the SSID to passive scanning. The performance impact of this misguided effort will be felt in multiple WLAN scenarios, including simple operations like joining a WLAN, and in significantly longer roaming times.

129k PDF Link)

(via WiFi Net News)

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