Heimdall updated
Today I dared a little. I upgraded the firmware of my Fritz!Box. It shipped with the firmware 29.04.22 and recently 29.04.29 was published. I was especially interested in running WPA and WPA2 in parallel, also I like the alarm function to be dependent on the weekday. I wasn’t brave/stupid enough to go and update just like that though. First, I waited a little while after the publication of the update. Also, I took the time to search the web for reports by other users potentially indicating a problem. I only found one guy who couldn’t get to the admin interface after upgrading. So I figured, I’d give it a shot.
As you can see in the screenshot of the WLAN monitor in the admin interface, I am now running WPA and WPA2 in parallel. That means that the older hardware in Valhalla can still connect, yet the newer stuff is as secure as possible. Admitted, as long as the WPA connections are up an attacker could simply try to break that and since the key is the same to all clients, also the WPA2 connections are compromized. But since only the old hardware such as Buri are running WPA (since not capable of WPA2), I think that’s acceptable.
Update: Of course, I can connect Buri via the TRENDNet adapter, which does support WPA2, and be safe. But there’s more older hardware around (which is even less frequently used than Buri…). So the argument still is valid.