Author: James Michael Stewart

WPS or WiFi Protected Setup (a.k.a. WSC or WiFi Simple Config) is a handy feature of a wireless base station that allows easy connection of new clients by the press of a physical button. WPS is required to be enabled by default for a manufacturer/vendor to achieve WiFi Alliance certification on their products. This means that most devices have it enabled right out of the box.

WiFi enabled devices have a little known idiosyncrasy that can be exploited by hackers. This issue is the automatic reconnection to wireless networks that your device has previously successfully connected to in the past. The typical device saves the details about the wireless network in a profile. When the wireless adapter is enabled and not currently connected to a network, it attempts to reconnect to a network it had a successfully connection to previously. The wireless adapter does this by making a connection request to the networks for which it has a stored wireless network profile. This connection request includes the network’s name (i.e. SSID) and the base station’s MAC address.