{"id":40330,"date":"2014-01-07T08:27:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T15:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/eek-google-knows-my-wifi-passwords-eek.html"},"modified":"2014-01-08T08:18:59","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T15:18:59","slug":"eek-google-knows-my-wifi-passwords-eek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/eek-google-knows-my-wifi-passwords-eek.html","title":{"rendered":"Eek! Google knows my WiFi passwords! Eek!"},"content":{"rendered":"
Or, perhaps, ho-hum. \u00a0Yes, if you have turned on "back up my settings" on your phone, then things like your WiFi passwords are being backed up, too. \u00a0Um … yes, they are. And this is a shocking revelation?<\/p>\n

Same thing happens if you login to Chrome and have it back up your settings — all those userid\/passwords you tell Chrome to remember also get backed up, which is even, potentially, a bigger concern.<\/p>\n

But, then, browser password files are notoriously weak (coughLastPasscough), if someone was skimming PCs. \u00a0And WiFi passwords? \u00a0WiFi security is near-laughable for anyone who actually wants to penetrate it.\u00a0And even assuming Google is using\u00a0those passwords \u00a0(or the NSA or FBI are compelling Google to hand over so they can), it still<\/i> requires a physical presence to get to those networks.<\/p>\n

Of the various security concerns folks should have, this seems to rate way<\/i> low on the chart. Indeed, the security aspects of having to go around and ask people for the passwords to those WiFi networks again probably represents a bigger issue than having Google auto-restore the WiFi passwords to your new Android phone.\ufeff<\/div>\n

\n

Embedded Link<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google knows nearly every Wi-Fi password in the world<\/a>
\n By default, Android devices phone home, copying Wi-Fi passwords to Google servers. While they may be encrypted, it seems fairly obvious that Google can read these Wi-Fi passwords. And if Google can read them, the U.S. government can compel them to turn over the passwords. WPA2 encryption? Extra-long random password? It’s all meaningless.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

View this post on Google+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, perhaps, ho-hum. \u00a0Yes, if you have turned on "back up my settings" on your phone, then things like your WiFi passwords are being backed up, too. \u00a0Um … yes, they are. And this is a shocking revelation? Same thing happens if you login to Chrome and have it back up your settings — all … Continue reading “Eek! Google knows my WiFi passwords! Eek!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,375,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts","category-computer-security","category-privacy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":51330,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/01\/google-offers-to-manage-all-your-passwords.html","url_meta":{"origin":40330,"position":0},"title":"Google offers to manage all your passwords","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 1-Jun-15 9:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"I like Google. I even largely trust Google. But, honestly, I don't see myself switching away from LastPass any time soon, even though the latter costs money.1. While I have little doubt that Google's new password manager will be pretty cool, LastPass functionality is mature and continuing to improve. Google\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44241,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/07\/on-those-billion-plus-stolen-passwords.html","url_meta":{"origin":40330,"position":1},"title":"On those billion-plus stolen passwords","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-Aug-14 9:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"Bruce Schneier is more than skeptical, given that the information about the actual passwords is sparse, and the news was broken by a single company, which nobody's ever heard of, who's now charging a fee to have your security status monitored. \u00a0(The article and comments are both worth a read.)Yeah,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132899,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/21\/your-passwords-please.html","url_meta":{"origin":40330,"position":2},"title":""Your passwords, please."","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 21-Feb-17 10:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The DHS is floating the idea (again) of requiring visitors (or visa applicants) to the US (specifically from the Evil Six Countries of Evil, but potentially from anywhere) to turn over passwords to their social media and network accounts and other possibly incriminating things.Except, of course, if you were an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131268,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/13\/passwords-are-better-longer-not-more-complex-or-frequently-changed.html","url_meta":{"origin":40330,"position":3},"title":"Passwords are better longer, not more complex or frequently changed","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 13-Aug-16 2:52pm","format":false,"excerpt":"And even the government is beginning to recognize that. Which is good news, even if longer passwords make for more opportunity for mistyping.The one thing I'll say about having 60 or 90 day expiries on passwords is that if a password is compromised, that compromise has a limited lifespan. But,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45083,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/10\/more-passwordy-badness.html","url_meta":{"origin":40330,"position":4},"title":"More passwordy badness","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Sep-14 12:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So consensus seems to be this set of leaks is \"old news\" stuff that's previously been out in the wild.For the sake of the family (here and California-wise), I've checked all our Gmail addies and they come up as clean.That said, occasionally changing Google passwords is not a bad idea.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12067,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/11\/26\/hash.html","url_meta":{"origin":40330,"position":5},"title":"Hash","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Nov-07 11:25am","format":false,"excerpt":"Oh, boy, you can use Google to decrypt MD5-encoded passwords. Um ... yippee? It only actually works on dictionary-entry passwords (which are big no-no's anyway)....","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40498,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40330\/revisions\/40498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}