Sony drops the ball on the PSP's wireless security

[wraggster]

Now here's a major technical fumble of the kind you don't see every day: Sony launches the PSP worldwide, touting its 802.11b support, and only includes WEP support! As you know if you read our Wi-Fi blackpaper (or if you've been paying any attention at all to wireless news for the past few years), WEP is garbage. Someone clever commented in a Sony message board thread about this issue that WEP is so insecure and fast WEP-cracking utils are so widespread and easy to use, that it's almost like there's a Ron Popeil product out that'll do it for you.

(Update for those wondering why this is important: Without WPA support on the PSP, you'll have to first unsecure your home or business network before you can connect to it with the PSP. For ad hoc PSP-to-PSP networking, nobody cares about encryption, but for PSP networking through a WAP, it's a big deal if you have can't use WPA.)

Not being a PSP owner (*sniff*), I wasn't aware of this issue until I ran across this outraged ZDNET blog post from George Ou. Ou isn't the first person to be mystified by Sony's decision—some googling turned up this blog post from earlier in the month—but he's the first I've seen with a big soapbox. Ou is calling for Sony to stop producing PSPs without WPA support, and if possible to ship a firmware upgrade that'll put WPA support on all existing PSPs.

I ran across this thread on the Sony board where the poster claims that Sony could indeed ship a firmware upgrade that would not only turn on WPA, but would enable other 802.11 protocols, including 802.11g:

The Sony PSP contains 2 Taiwan manufactured Wi-Fi chips designed by Marvell Semiconductor. The model numbers are 88W8380 (MAC) and 88W8010 (RF transceiver). The chips are listed on this webpage: http://www.edepot.com/reviews_sony_psp.html

The 88W8010 is an upgraded (802.11g) version of 88W8000 (which only supports 802.11b). So this chip is fine. The one in question is 88W8380. If it is based on 88W8300, then it only supports 802.11b. But if it is based on 88W8310, then it is 802.11g capable (54Mbps, about five times faster than 11Mbps of 802.11b). The 88W8310 chip also support 802.11i and 802.11e, which is AES (WPA) and QoS (quality of service). Maybe someone has more info on the 88W8380 chip. If it is based on 88W8310 (not 88W8300), then the PSP actually supports 802.11g, but not activated.

I haven't verified any of this, so I simply pass it along as-is. Perhaps someone with a PSP who wants to void the warranty could post some verification in the discussion thread? If it's true, Sony needs to get on the ball and ship that firmware upgrade ASAP.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050429-4865.html

[William Smith]

It was something that I had overlooked as I only use WEP anyway.

The point is valid and would currently render the PSP online capabilities useless for anyone who has WPA (or better) already enabled on their wireless network.

However, I only use basic WEP as a safeguard for a humble home network and am not really expecting anyone to even try to hack into my network. Enabling WEP was just to stop any neighbours sharing my internet connection for free!

If Sony really wanted to be on the ball then they wouldn't have bothered with 802.11b and gone straight for 802.11g.

Prior to getting a PSP I was "g" only on my wireless and had to enable "b & g" instead just for the PSP.

There is a lot of quite new wireless networking stuff that can handle WEP but not WPA so given the choice I would happily have a WEP only PSP with 802.11g.

[Clare]

Don't forget that a lot of wireles hubs, access points and routers also have the added security of mac address tables. And with that it doesn't matter what protocol you use for security, the access point will only allow devices with the correct MAC addresses to connect.

Not many devices can handle MAC address spoofing as it's normally hard encoded into the network card itself, and not software controlable.

[reakt]

Don't forget that a lot of wireles hubs, access points and routers also have the added security of mac address tables. And with that it doesn't matter what protocol you use for security, the access point will only allow devices with the correct MAC addresses to connect.

Not many devices can handle MAC address spoofing as it's normally hard encoded into the network card itself, and not software controlable.

Clare - you seem to know a little about this topic. I've setup my router to restrict access to certain MAC addresses. However, I need to know the name of the "device" as well as the MAC address. I've been reading my PSP manual and not found the answer to this. If I set up the router to accept all connections, the PSP connects and the MAC address is displayed by the router, but next to the device name it says "unknown".

So I've set up my router to accepts connections from the PSP MAC address, I've tried leaving the device field empty in the router settings. I also entered, "unknown" - exactly as it appears when the PSP connects. However, using either of these methods, when I switch on the MAC address restricted access in the router settings, the PSP cannot connect.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Ric