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I guess there should be a sound technical reason for choosing to encrypt with a well known key vs transmitting cleartext, but I fail to imagine it. What's the

I guess there should be a sound technical reason for choosing to encrypt with a well known key vs transmitting cleartext, but I fail to imagine it. What's the advantage of doing it?

lima 6y ago
Our links are essentially standard 5 GHz wifi, but on licensed bands with higher tx power, and we don't want random people to connect to them. A WPA key mitigates that without breaking any regulations. Mainly a mitigation against curious people with Ubiquiti equipment, which makes it way too easy to disable country restrictions and find and connect to our links in licensed bands :-)
- luma 6y ago
  So if they don’t know the key or where to find it, how is that “publicly known”?
  - lima 6y ago
    You can easily find it on a public website if you know what you're looking for. It's only meant to deter people who click the "Scan" button on their equipment.
garmaine 6y ago
Well depending on what is broadcast, it might have a regular structure and perhaps there's some reason you'd want to randomize the broadcast signal. Maybe some highly specific noise in the environment that happens to resonate with the signal structure? Alternatively there might be protocols which have mandatory encryption as part of their specification. Or you might be using a combined encryption-authentication mode, but only for the purpose of authentication on ham radio. Those are all a bit of a stretch though.