Please can you describe the high risks in greater detail if you:

- don't expose the EAP's web UI to the Internet,
- don't run online banking services or shop systems with credit card processing directly on the EAP,
- use the EAPs in an isolated, secured intranet only,
- establish usual security measures for management of EAPs?

Im really curious to what extend the well-known weakness of HTTPS for a device's web UI can pose risks over standard HTTP.

I know what MITM attacks are. If "someone" is able to snoop on my users using a MITM attack, then I really have a much bigger problem then just HTTPS/SSL weakness. This would mean that this "someone" has already broken into my intranet.

Again my question:

What are the exact "huge risks" in an isolated intranet if using a weak HTTPS/SSL instead of an unsecured HTTP for a web UI of an EAP?

Or let me ask this way:

Are you really applying criteria for mission-critical, fully exposed Internet (!) server systems carrying sensitive data such as credit card numbers to a web user interface of an EAP in an isolated intranet?

If so, I guess you don't apply security measures in your intranet when exposing certain uncritical services in a WiFi network, do you? If you deploy business WiFi solutions (remember: this is the business forum, not just some home user's corner) and you don't take measures to deny any access - be it public or private to the company - to the mgmt infrastructure of your network devices, then yes, you should indeed be concerned about weak SSL ciphers.

But even if strong ciphers will be used for the EAP's mgmt interface, I would never ever expose this mgmt infrastructure to regular WiFi users and I would not count on a dumb AP to secure its web UI by just using (currently) strong ciphers which might become weak as early as next month as history of SSL did show many times.

alfwro13 wrote

Is that how you justify yourself for using insecure products?

You are completely missing the point.

You claim that the SSL weakness of an AP's web UI would enable "someone to snoop on [other] users" of that AP. That's horribly wrong.

No-one can "snoop on users" using a MitM to the web UI of an AP. Someone could exploit the SSL weakness to snoop on users only if the user's devices use weak SSL ciphers or the servers visited by those users use weak ciphers. And yes, those SSL versions need to be up-to-date since they are exposed to the Internet.

But back to the AP: this "someone" can't even snoop on the admin user connecting to the EAP unless this someone already gained access to the internal network or the admin exposes the web UI to the public, which is a no-go. So someone can't break into the EAP unless he already has broken into the internal network. That's my point.

There are certain superior security measurements which need to be in place to secure administrative access. So, if you expose the admin UI to the Internet, then you're at risk and then I would call it a "huge security risk". But since it is insane to expose internal networks to the Internet, I would call it a minor issue in terms of security wether the web UI is safeguarded with strong, with weak or with no SSL security at all. In fact, I even don't use SSL in my administrative network only because there are much stronger security measures in place such as an isolated mgmt VLAN (isolated subnet inside an isolated intranet, double secured and supported by every EAP), which makes it impossible for anyone outside to gain access to any internal device's web UI using a MitM, even not employees with approved access to the company's regular network.