So our small university changed our networking from regular wifi to wifi with certificates. They use securew2 to setup certificates on android and root certificates for linux. Should I be concerned? I know on iOS the certificates are marked as untrusted from what many students have told me. What should I look for in a certificate as I really don’t know much but hate the idea of installing something on my phone to use wifi…
I think that untrusted means that they aren’t signed by an already trusted organization. But since you’re receiving them direct from the school, that shouldn’t be a concern.
I assume that just means WPA2 Enterprise? As long as you aren’t using the certificates for anything but authenticating the WiFi network, I don’t think that’s any worse security-wise
Certificates are generally more secure than passwords. You could either ask the school IT to provide a proper certificate which is trusted by your smartphone or only use their provided certificate for the single connection on Linux. This can be done easily with NetworkManager.
Which concerns exactly do you have with certificates? The ‘untrusted’ thing is because the Certificate Authority isn’t in your root trust store. It’s probably self signed. To get a certificate signed by a big CA, you’d have to pay money to them which might be unnecessary if the school can do their own CA properly.
Most larger universities I’ve been to do this as well. You don’t really need to worry.
