April 29th, 2005

Sony PSP will ruin wireless LAN security in the home

Posted by George Ou @ 9:20 am

Categories: Security

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Just when we thought that we were beginning to make progress in the area of wireless LAN security with WPA and 802.11i ratification, Sony comes out with their new PSP (Play Station Portable) that will force homes to remain wide open to hackers.  It’s bad enough for a company to neglect patching older products, but it’s absolutely inexcusable that the new 2005 Sony PSP will be unleashed upon the masses with defective Wi-Fi equipment.  Since WEP was found to be completely broken five years ago, the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2003 mandated that all Wi-Fi products comply with the new WPA standard and use the new TKIP encryption algorithm yet Sony somehow feels exempt from this responsibility. 

Although Sony isn’t the only company this year to release a new consumer product that only supports WEP encryption, they are going to be one of the biggest culprits because of the number of PSPs that will be sold.  Because of their leadership status, they have a duty to build products that don’t endanger their customers cyber safety.  The Sony PSP will be an extremely popular device that will introduce the notebook-less masses to Wi-Fi networking and they’re all going to want to use the PSP on their home wireless LAN.  Unfortunately, PSP owners would have to lower their wireless security settings to support the PSP and endanger every computer connected to their home network.

Sony needs to rectify the situation as soon as possible by retrofitting all new PSPs off the factory floor with WPA capability and offer a free upgrade to the PSPs that are already out in the wild.  Until they do so, I’m going to keep pointing to Sony as one of the biggest impediments to good wireless LAN security.  Any company that endangers their customers computers or home networks with such blatant neglect should either patch the problem immediately or be liable for any damages that their customers suffer.