Last night, in an attempt to update my PSP, I decided to switch off MAC address filtering on our router (running dd-wrt) and just use a password. I know a little about how the security works, as I was playing around with KisMAC for a while. I’m aware that WEP is completely worthless in regards to security, and also was aware that WPA is pretty much broken via brute force. So, I went with WPA (WPA2 Personal to be exact). Yay, things are fine and dandy.
So I wake up today, start mucking around with our diff importer for iBegin, and all of a sudden this pops up in my face. “The wireless network appears to have been compromised and will be disabled for a minute.”. Ok?
I figure maybe it was a fluke, and then all of a sudden my Macbook shuts off (not the first time, random). There goes an hours work. This could be from overheating (though my limited knowledges makes me beliee otherwise), or it’s just another random issue that I get to deal with. I brought it back up, finished everything I was doing, and all of the issues were gone.
Oh, wait, here we are four hours later, and I was just disconnected from Wifi again with the same error as last time. Now we are here, ranting, about how I wish I could run Mac OS on my own hardware. Apple does a great job with intuitive and slick laptop designs. They do a great job with the UI of their software (I love Mac OS, no regrets). They, however, have repeatedly poor taste in how hardware should work over the years.
If anyone is familiar with either of these issues, and has a solution, let me know 
6 Responses to "Apple Hardware — The downside to using a Mac"
This thread on the Apple Discussions forum looks like it might help you.
Good Luck!
You call this the “downside to using a Mac.” I would suggest that the key to your post is when you wrote, ” I know a little about how the security works.”
Your article is not about a downside to using a Mac. Rather it is about the fact that “a little knowledge is dangerous.”
Well, you’ve learned your lesson. I hope that the thread Hans directs you to helps.
Next time, be sure you know something before acting upon it.
Good luck!
“was playing around with KisMAC for a while”, “I know a little about how the security works”, there’s the problem right there, using a tool geared more towards the security professionals while letting down your network’s defenses. Brilliant! And then leaving the network in that state unattended… Genius!
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I used KisMAC a while back, not currently. My network is secured using WPA2 Personal currently, and before that it was direct MAC address filtering.
MAC address filtering is useless. What good does it do you?
If someone is good enough to get past WPA encryption, they’re going to waltz past MAC address filtering in less than a couple seconds. It only takes a moment or two with a packet sniffer to extract a viable Mac address from any packet. Sure, you can’t do that until you’ve broken the WPA encryption, but how exactly does that matter?
Found this on a different site:
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I have cracked this - if you have tried to access the wireless using wrong wireless autentication protocol say WEP personal instead WEP2 personal - and entered password - for both - THEN in flaky reception conditions mac tries first the wrong authentication method and messes somehow the right one - BUT you can fix this by going switcing airport off then go keychainaccess and delete the credentials - and then connect to wlan again - that should do it.
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Sounds like it might be what is happening with you. Just go into keychain, delete all credentials for your airport connection and reconnect using the current credentials/security settings. I haven't run into this problem, but I do go into Keychain pretty regularly and clean things up a bit.
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