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Say my home network has a wifi-password and my friends are connected to it (since I gave them my wifi-password). Is it possible for me to read their data transfer? If yes, then it would also be possible for them to spy on the other users in my home network, right?

I was just curious since public networks are very unsecure and private networks are ''the same'' only with a password. And if I know that password, it should be the same (just with familiar persons), am I wrong?

ZPlaya7
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  • Look up: wifi guest isolation. Depending on your equipment it should be possible to isolate clients from each other on a guest network. – Kate Jan 10 '22 at 21:07

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If your Wi-Fi network is using WEP, WPA-PSK, or WPA2-PSK for security, then, yes, anybody who knows the password can decrypt traffic from other users. Of course, any traffic that has another layer of encryption (HTTPS, ssh, etc.) will not be readable.

If the network uses WPA3, then it is much more difficult to do so, probably not within the capability of the average attacker.

In either case, you should set up a separate guest network for any outsiders (many routers allow this). Not only does this prevent them from spying on you, but also it mitigates other problems such as people with infected devices connecting to your network and introducing malware into your home network.

kelalaka
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nobody
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  • KRACK's team attacked WPA3, too [Dragonblood](https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/dragonblood.pdf) – kelalaka Jan 11 '22 at 10:06
  • @kelalaka Thanks! I hadn't ever looked into attacks against WPA3 since it is so rarely used, but it sounds like IEEE 802.11 team really sucks at protocol design. I still think WPA3 is an improvement over WPA2 since it uses ECC for its handshake, which is better than WPA2 where one simply passively monitor the handshake and decrypt traffic if you knew the password. – nobody Jan 11 '22 at 16:08
  • Yes, much more better. The KRACK's team attack is different than what they did to WPA2. Still they found another method. Attacks always improves and this is a frightening ... +1.. – kelalaka Jan 11 '22 at 16:17