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Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

code.google.com

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Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#81

Post by philsnow »

brudgers wrote: post #67
jsnell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to dismiss an argument as "horseshit", you should perhaps offer a compelling alternative. Because your idea of what is going on is frankly ridiculous. It's easy to see the user-experience story for this. Upgrade your phone, buy a tablet, etc, and as by magic all 10 wifi networks you use work without any configuration. No need to type that 32-character nuisance of a WPA2 password again, etc. How lovely…

Encrypt the data on the device. Backup encrypted version in the cloud. Download encrypted backup to new device. Unencrypt on new device. Merge versions on the device. No need for plaintext on Google servers. No way for monetization by Google. Or to put my alternative another way, how much is a data set mapping WiFi passwords to networks for the city of Bejing worth to a foreign intelligence agency or other state-leve…

> Setting up a password for an Android device only needs to be done once for each device->network pairing.

So you want _yet another_ password between the user and his magical experience or whatever ?

I see myself as a "privacy enthusiast", and even I recognize that wanting to encrypt wifi passwords in this way would only appeal to ~0.01% of android users.

You could argue that google could make this an option hidden under the three dots / context menu / whatever that thing is called, but there's probably much lower-hanging fruit than this.

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#82

Post by rsync »

The title is, I think, a bit misleading. That's because it is not Android per se that is sending your wifi passwords to the cloud, it's the use of the "backup my data" tool.

If you're interested in robust, secure storage of your data, the candy-flavored OS built-in-cloud-tool may not be your best bet. It's only there to check a feature box on a sales card.

"Oooh but I get 5 gigs for free!"

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#83

Post by js2 »

bhauer wrote: post #35

Yet another place where I feel a tinge of anger that VPNs utterly failed to deliver on the potential of private secure connectivity to personal data storage from anywhere. Several of us here at HN set up and manage home networks to which we connect over an encrypted channel. To us--well, to me at least--it seems plain as day that my device should allow me to backup its sensitive data to a file that I store on a file…

Back to my Mac pretty seamlessly establishes an ipsec connection back to a time capsule or other Mac on your home network.

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#84

Post by sixbrx »

ajross wrote: post #78
gcb0 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you even have to backup a password? It's idiotic from every way you look at it

Sorry, that doesn't make any sense. The specific use case here is unboxing a new phone, logging in, and having access to all of your standard networks without having to look up your wifi passwords. Clearly that has value to anyone who has ever used a new phone. But to get to your core point: unless you have an amazing memory (unlikely) or reuse passwords (not unlikely, but, to borrow a term, "idiotic") you have to be…

Or use a password manager, which does proper encryption.

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#85

Post by jsnell »

brudgers wrote: post #67
jsnell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to dismiss an argument as "horseshit", you should perhaps offer a compelling alternative. Because your idea of what is going on is frankly ridiculous. It's easy to see the user-experience story for this. Upgrade your phone, buy a tablet, etc, and as by magic all 10 wifi networks you use work without any configuration. No need to type that 32-character nuisance of a WPA2 password again, etc. How lovely…

Encrypt the data on the device. Backup encrypted version in the cloud. Download encrypted backup to new device. Unencrypt on new device. Merge versions on the device. No need for plaintext on Google servers. No way for monetization by Google. Or to put my alternative another way, how much is a data set mapping WiFi passwords to networks for the city of Bejing worth to a foreign intelligence agency or other state-leve…

You're providing innuendo and "exercises for the reader", not an argument. That's pretty weak.

What would such a data set of Redmond be worth to Google? Nothing. Because accessing those networks for industrial espionage (if I read your innuendo right) would be illegal and immoral. It would drag Google's name in the mud, lose them customers, credibility, and most likely a decent chunk of talented employees. The liabilities would be massive. And what's the gain? I don't know what you think it would be, but it'd have to be pretty damn valuable to outweigh the potential costs.

As for monetization... Android is a moat. The way things are going, whoever controls the client operating system controls the default web browser and the default web search. This is an existential threat to Google. Microsoft winning the mobile OS war would soon make Bing the leading search engine. Apple conclusively winning would allow them to charge monopoly rents on access to the users.

It's like Google Toolbar back in the day. It's possible it provided some information about user behavior. But the real value came in that it added a visible Google search box into IE.

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#86

Post by w0utert »

philsnow wrote: post #81
brudgers wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encrypt the data on the device. Backup encrypted version in the cloud. Download encrypted backup to new device. Unencrypt on new device. Merge versions on the device. No need for plaintext on Google servers. No way for monetization by Google. Or to put my alternative another way, how much is a data set mapping WiFi passwords to networks for the city of Bejing worth to a foreign intelligence agency or other state-leve…

> Setting up a password for an Android device only needs to be done once for each device->network pairing. So you want _yet another_ password between the user and his magical experience or whatever ? I see myself as a "privacy enthusiast", and even I recognize that wanting to encrypt wifi passwords in this way would only appeal to ~0.01% of android users. You could argue that google could make this an option hidden u…

>> So you want _yet another_ password between the user and his magical experience or whatever ?

I find this a pretty weak objection. Do you really want to trade all your stored passwords for the convenience of not having to enter 1 additional password ('my Android backup password') once every one or two years when you activate a new or additional device?? I wonder how this objection rhymes with having logins on 20+ different websites?

While I don't believe that Google wants to harvest your WiFi passwords (but also don't rule it out), I also don't think it's all that paranoid to assume that Google deliberately chose to not encrypt backups by default, so they can extract useful information from Android device backups. Or do you still believe Android is 'free' because Google is a charity?

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#87

Post by archivator »

philsnow wrote: post #81
brudgers wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encrypt the data on the device. Backup encrypted version in the cloud. Download encrypted backup to new device. Unencrypt on new device. Merge versions on the device. No need for plaintext on Google servers. No way for monetization by Google. Or to put my alternative another way, how much is a data set mapping WiFi passwords to networks for the city of Bejing worth to a foreign intelligence agency or other state-leve…

> Setting up a password for an Android device only needs to be done once for each device->network pairing. So you want _yet another_ password between the user and his magical experience or whatever ? I see myself as a "privacy enthusiast", and even I recognize that wanting to encrypt wifi passwords in this way would only appeal to ~0.01% of android users. You could argue that google could make this an option hidden u…

You could in theory salt the primary account password with a new salt, derive a key from it and use that to encrypt the password list (sending the salt alongside it). This of course implies that the plaintext password never hits Google's servers, which it probably does.

In general, I'm not sure this is a valid threat model. If you're not trusting Bob with your Wi-Fi passwords, why are you trusting him with everything else? If anyone compromises Google, there's far more valuable data on your account than the Wi-Fi list. Even if that's all they gain access to, it's pretty hard to exploit remotely. If someone is targeting you at this scale, you have bigger problems to worry about.

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#88

Post by antimagic »

brudgers wrote: post #32
enginous wrote: post #12

What key are you going to encrypt these passwords with? If you were to encrypt passwords in the cloud with a key that's stored on the device, you can't unlock the passwords on a different device (or the same device after flashing), which is the whole point of backing it up in the cloud. If you were to encrypt them with the user's Google Accounts password, the device would need to ask for that password on every startu…

Horseshit. Setting up a password for an Android device only needs to be done once for each device->network pairing. The reuse of Wifi passwords across devices is an edge case given the predominate ownership pattern of Android devices - i.e. most people have a phone that runs Android and no other Android device. Google's scheme allows them to harvest the passwords to a vast number of wireless networks. Google has harv…

This, in addition to Google's demonstrated willingness to hand user data over to the US government means that the government (or a rogue Google employee, or a hacker that gets access to Google's database, or a rogue member of the US government, or ... you get the picture) can hit you with a LAN-based MotM attack pretty much whenever they wish. That means they can own your computer, because your Android phone connected to the same Wifi router. Uh, no thanks.

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#89

Post by tzs »

enginous wrote: post #12

What key are you going to encrypt these passwords with? If you were to encrypt passwords in the cloud with a key that's stored on the device, you can't unlock the passwords on a different device (or the same device after flashing), which is the whole point of backing it up in the cloud. If you were to encrypt them with the user's Google Accounts password, the device would need to ask for that password on every startu…

> If you were to encrypt them with the user's Google Accounts password, the device would need to ask for that password on every startup or store the GA password on the device at all times (the latter option is a far greater evil than the current "situation")

If we are just talking about encrypting for backup, then that is not correct. The device would only need to ask for the password before the first backup that includes a wifi password, on the first backup after any wifi password change, and before a restore. Wifi password storage on the device itself can continue to use whatever mechanism it currently uses.

This can actually be cut down to just needing to ask before the first backup and before a restore. Generate a public/private key pair. Ask for the GA password and verify it, and use that to deterministically derive a key to encrypt the private key. Store the public and private keys in the cloud. Cloud data can then be encrypted with the public key before being sent to the cloud.

They only need to ask for the GA password again when they need the private key, such as for restoring the data.

Re: Android saves wifi passwords in plaintext to the cloud

#90

Post by azernik »

brudgers wrote: post #54
Symmetry wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine people getting new phones is the common use case.

If I buy a new Android phone, odds are it is not one which makes me a Google customer - i.e. Google gets none of the proceeds should I purchase a Samsung Galaxy. The only means by which Google profits is by monetizing data leaking from my device. And my WiFi password is something potentially monetizable. When choosing between ignorance and malice as motivations, it is perhaps proper to choose ignorance even with Goog…

By that logic, they shouldn't make the Android OS at all - they don't get any money for it!
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