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Information Technology News Apple bolsters AirPort base station security
Information Technology News Apple bolsters AirPort base station security | Apple bolsters AirPort base station security |
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| Written by Stephen Withers | |
| Wednesday, 11 April 2007 | |
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Apple recommends that the "Block incoming IPv6 connections" setting is checked after installing the new firmware. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses rather than the 32 bits of the older and more widely used IPv4. This vastly increases the number of possible addresses, allowing every device to have a fixed IP address. A method called tunnelling allows connections to IPv6 devices over IPv4 networks. People are used to relying on routers to block unsolicited connections from the Internet, but the AirPort Extreme's previous default setting meant tunnelling support was active out of the box. That wasn't a bug, just a less secure choice - in general, it is safer to default to the most secure usable configuration and then allow owners to open things up as necessary. The other problem addressed by the update really was a bug, though how serious it was depends on the user. Unlike previous AirPort base stations - but like wireless routers from other vendors - the Extreme 802.11n model allows the connection of a USB disk drive, which it then shares with connected computers. Passwords are used to restrict access to particular users. Where this went wrong was that even if the disk was password protected, users didn't need a password to see the names of the files on the shared drive. Whether that's really a problem depends on the environment, but it was a fault and Apple has fixed it. The updated firmware can be downloaded and installed via AirPort Utility 5.1, which was released last month as part of AirPort Base Station Update 2007-001.{moscomment}
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