WPA3 bug found

[jacob9hawkes]

Hi, relatively new to VM and just joined the forums. Discovered a very odd bug with WPA3 security. Long post ahead to cover my findings.

Everything felt very sluggish, then today (Tuesday) I found all my wireless devices randomly dropping connection. Speed tests show max of around 120Mb/s, when I should get 1Gb.

After several reboots, two factory resets and trying various combinations of disconnecting devices etc. I discovered the Hub is refusing to let more than device connect via 5GHz at a time. This can be seen in the Wireless > Security menu where you can choose what frequency a device connects with. Out of two devices connected post factory reset, one would always be 2.4 and the other 5, and attempting to change both to 5 would fail. You could swap which was on 5 but that’s it. After some experimenting it looks to be caused by WPA3 security.

I had WPA2/3 enabled (can’t use only WPA3 as my girlfriend’s old laptop doesn’t support it, so I haven’t tested that but assume it’s the same) for 2 months before these issues so i assume a firmware update got pushed early this week that has introduced a bug? Oddly I can see some forum posts about people having issues with Apple devices and WPA3, but neither my iPhone or MacBook had issues before this week.

Hope this can be escalated by a VM employee and my description helps solve the issue!

[Tudor]

Ca you please let us know the firmware release the Hub5 is on?

[Sephiroth]

I would turn off all Smart WiFi settings. They are usually the cause of most WiFi access problems.

[Adduxi]

But then the "Intelligent WiFi" and Pods don't work .....   🙂

[Sephiroth]

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@Adduxi wrote:

But then the "Intelligent WiFi" and Pods don't work .....   🙂

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Good. Those pods are a-con for non-1gig customers.  Tightly managed by VM, only as good as the relay along the path to the furthest pod and the channel selection problems aren’t worth suffering. 

anything “intelligent” or “super” developed by VM is the exact opposite. 

[jacob9hawkes]

Hi,

From the admin menu:

Hardware version: 1.2

Software version: LG-RDK_4.6.24-2206.7

[Tudor]

That release is the same as mine which I have been on for some time. I suspect the problem lies with PMF, but cannot be sure as VM never ever issue specs for their hubs. I don’t get your error as I run in modem mode as I have done with all VM hubs I have ever had. VM locks down all the parameters on their hubs, on my WAPs I have something like 30 parameters I can tailor, even down to the transmit power.

[gittingr]

This still appears to be an issue. Only been had the VM broadband for 8 days and had numerous strange network connection issues over WiFi. Cable connection is fine. WiFi random drop out for various devices at random times ( Sky mini Box's, Alexa box's, home automation switches and lights, Hive hub and devices.) Last outage just killed all wifi connections but all wired connections worked fine. Wifi showed the ssid and good wifi strength but nothing could connect.  All Works fine when changed the setting from WPA2/WPA3 to WPA2 only. I looked at all sorts of settings and test as I'm a network engineer by trade.

[Robert_P]

Hello gittingr

Sorry to hear of the wireless network issues experienced since your installation, we appreciate the detail outlining the issue and what you have tried to resolve this.

We have tried to look into this further but the Hub itself is showing as unreachable, this can sometimes be due to the hub being in modem mode and used via a 3rd party mesh system. Given the information provided this doesn't appear to be the case for yourself going off of the details provided.

Can you confirm the hub was on at the time of us checking this and responding? 

Rob

[Client62]

Now we known why WPA2-PSK / WPA3-SAE is disabled by default, a pity "ax" can not also be disabled it would remove a another barrier that prevent a range of IoT & older laptops from connecting.