Like many people, I read this item at Lifehacker about how a PhD candidate found a way to compromise WPA2 security and switched my wireless router's settings from TKIP+AES to AES alone. Everything seemed to work fine afterwards, so I scratched it off my To Do list and went about my business.
A few days later, I discovered my work laptop (Win XP SP2) would no longer connect to my home wireless setup. It would still connect to WiFi connections in other locations, though.
It took two days to make the connection between the wireless router setting change and the delayed isolation of my work laptop-- but I confirmed my hypothesis tonight by returning my router's encryption settings back to TKIP+AES, and the Windows laptop automatically connected almost immediately. I turn the setting back to AES only, and it loses the connection.
I'm sure there's a hotfix/patch from Microsoft to address this issue, but the policy for getting Windows Updates on workplace computers is bewilderingly confusing and slow. For example, our web browser standard is and continues to be Internet Explorer 6-- which makes for marvelous conversations with third-party vendors. So the question is, should I manually invoke Windows Update on my work computer and get God only knows how many patches, fixes and updates, and potentially risk introducing new issues, or should I just leave my router on the less secure of the two settings?
Discuss amongst yourselves. ;)
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