Wi-Fi security begins to experience its greatest improvement for more than a decade

Wi-Fi devices have been using the same security protocol for more than a decade. But today, it will start to change: the Wi-Fi Alliance, which oversees the adoption of the Wi-Fi standard, begins to certify the products that support WPA3, the successor of the security protocol WPA2 used since 2004.

The new protocol provides a number of additional protections for devices connected via Wi-Fi. One big improvement is that it's harder for hackers to crack your password by guessing it again and again, and another Limits what data hackers can see even once they've discovered the password. Nothing will change as much as users see it; just type your password and connect to the network.

The protections of WPA3 will not just turn overnight – in fact, it will be a multi-year process. First, you will need to buy a new router that supports WPA3 (or hope your old router is updated to support it). The same goes for all your gadgets; you will have to buy new ones that support WPA3, or hope your old ones will be updated. Fortunately, devices that support WPA3 can still connect to devices that use WPA2, so your gadgets should not stop working suddenly because you've brought something new to the house.

The first big novelty of WPA3 is the protection against off-line attacks and riddles. This is where an attacker captures data from your Wi-Fi stream, takes them back to a private computer and guesses again and again the passwords until they find a correspondence. With WPA3, attackers are supposed to be able to make a single estimate of these offline data before they become useless; they will instead interact with the Wi-Fi device live whenever they want to make a guess. (And it's more difficult because they have to be physically present, and devices can be set up to protect against repeated assumptions.)

The other major addition to WPA3, as emphasized by the Alliance, is the ultimate secret. This is a privacy feature that prevents older data from being compromised by a subsequent attack. Thus, if an attacker captures an encrypted Wi-Fi transmission and then encrypts the password, he will still not be able to read the old data – he will only be able to see the new information currently circulating on the network.

These changes apply to personal and home uses of Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi as it is used in a corporate configuration, such as in a large office where each user receives a word different password, also receives updates; but he will have a different set of protections.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is expecting the deployment of WPA3 to accelerate over the next year. For now, it will not be mandatory in new products. But the next generation of Wi-Fi itself – the 802.11ax – is also starting to come out and is expected to be adopted massively by the end of 2019; As these devices become available, the Alliance expects the pace of adoption of WPA3 to accelerate. The Alliance says that as adoption grows, WPA3 will eventually become a requirement for a device to be considered certified Wi-Fi.

Even though WPA2 is over ten years old, it has not been spared since then. The protocol is always maintained and updated to respond to new exploits and protections; the Alliance says that WPA3 will be the same.

In addition to launching the WPA3 certification, the Alliance also announces a new optional Wi-Fi feature called Easy Connect. Easy Connect is meant to simplify the process of connecting gadgets from the smart home to your router, which can be difficult when they do not have screens or buttons on them. If the device (and the router it connects to) supports Easy Connect, you can scan a QR code with your phone so that Wi-Fi credentials are automatically sent to the new device. While this seems like an excellent feature, it's hard to guess how much it will unfold, as it requires the support of many parties before it becomes really useful.

The news on adoption is more encouraging on the WPA3 side. Many companies have already announced their support, including Qualcomm, which has already started making a chip for phones and tablets that supports 802.11ax and WPA3.