Microsoft says don't use PPTP and MS-CHAP

h-online.com

40 points·Suraj-Sun··9 comments

Here's Moxie Marlinspike's blog post about the MS-CHAPv2 vulnerabilities: https://www.cloudcracker.com/blog/2012/07/29/cracking-ms-cha...

Bruce Schneier also wrote about MS-CHAPv2 vulnerabilities back in 1999: https://www.schneier.com/paper-pptpv2.html

I don't see anywhere in the KB article advising not to use PPTP. MS only recommends switching tunneling tech as an alternative to using more secure authentication method with PPTP (ie PEAP).

Besides incorrect title, the final remark about OpenVPN is bit trollish imho.

Yeah - why would MSFT suggest an open source solution when they have their own tech? When have you ever seen MSFT suggest an open solution?

You may be surprised to hear that there's lots of stuff happening with open source here at Microsoft. ASP.NET MVC, the Azure SDKs, and F# are all open source. Check out this blog for more: http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/.

Does anybody have more information on the claim in this article that WPA2 is insecure too?

It's only insecure if MS-CHAP is used for authentication, ie when used in WPA2-EAP mode. More commonly WPA2-PSK is used, which remains unaffected.

In English this means that if you're using the standard "share a single password for the wifi network" mode that all consumers understand, you're fine. If you're in an enterprisey environment where you use your own wifi password that is the same as your login password elsewhere, you're in trouble.

You may be in trouble. There are other forms of EAP that do not use MS-CHAP, like EAP-TLS.

WPA-Enterprise networks that use MS-CHAPv2 are generally tunneling it inside of another secure channel (such as TLS with PEAP). In those cases you are not at risk to over the air snooping.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com