Re: DWA-140 Netgear USB wireless adapter

On 10/17/22 10:00 AM, Paul wrote:
> On 10/17/2022 9:07 AM, philo wrote:
>> I friend had an old Win7 machine that I replaced with a five year old 
>> Win10 machine and used his old wireless adapter. Windows automatically 
>> installed it and I tested it by doing all the Windows updates.
>> Seemed fine but it would not connect to most websites.
>>
>> I never saw such a thing.
>> When I had a look at his Won7 machine I noticed the wireless was 
>> working fine with the factory provided drivers whose interface took 
>> over for Windows drivers.
>>
>> Just curious as to what kind of odd security the factory drivers 
>> contained. Rather then mess around with it, I just used another 
>> wireless adapter since I had a box full of them.
>>
> 
> My first guess, would be some sort of certificate problem for https.
> 
> Was there an AV on the machine ? An AV known to use a MITM attack
> method for providing https "Security" ? The software in that case,
> substitutes its own certificates in place of whatever the rest
> of the computer wanted to use.
> 
> But none of that really lines up with your symptoms.
> 
> I'm not a wireless expert (having no wireless setup here helps).
> There used to be some sort of wireless zero config, which likely
> require adherence to standards so that a "Microsoft method" could
> work for everything.
> 
> Microsoft, in fact, does not always allow factory drivers. I use
> factory drivers for their improved control panel interface,
> making detailed setups possible. But I think Microsoft has
> had words with these companies, and there are rules about
> which subsystems you can provide drivers for.
> 
> An example is Intel. Intel pretends to be installing a USB driver
> with an INF. However, if you look inside the USB INF file, you
> find #include usbport.inf which is a Microsoft USB driver INF. The
> Intel "driver" in that case, just calls the Microsoft driver. This
> gets around the Microsoft rule that Microsoft provides that driver,
> yet allows Intel to pretend they did it :-) Other companies
> are not as big as Intel... and not that cheeky.
> 
> If you were to use Wireshark on this connection, first problem
> is which "capture" interface does Wifi, and would it work. I use
> Wireshark on wired connections, to debug things. The second problem,
> is it's https, and I don't know how to debug a running (encrypted)
> https session. I understand there is some way to do that. You
> might find there are challenges, if attempting debug, but maybe
> it's necessary to learn how, if you want to understand the details.
> 
> You got certificates, firewalls, flaky hardware as explanations.
> A firewall might knock out all traffic. With LetsEncrypt certificate
> on hundreds of thousands of smaller web sites, a single fault with
> one of those can knock out quite a percentage of the Internet. WinXP
> users discovered this, when the LetsEncrypt had something above it
> expire. The thing is, when that happens, it's practically impossible
> to download the required certificate... unless you have working https.
> A kind of Catch22. The last site I could find, which would allow
> a WinXP users to bootstrap out of LetsEncrypt (curl.se) has itself
> changed from http: access to https: , closing the last door to finding
> help obtaining a download tool.
> 
> This... is the law of unintended consequences. Mark it well. Sure,
> it's secure, so secure it turns WinXP into an island unable to reach
> the web. The intention was to prevent three letter agencies from
> snooping, but too much of this easily turns a computer into
> an Internet-free box.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS_Everywhere
> 
> Browsers which carry their own certificate store (Firefox, Chrome?),
> may be immune to island syndrome. However, modern Firefox and
> Chrome don't run on WinXP. I don't think modern Seamonkey does
> any more, either.
> 
> *******
> 
> I think you did the right thing,
> by just changing adapters, and moving on :-)
> 
>     Paul
> 


Thanks Paul,
If I ever end up with that particular one as my very last adapter, I 
will use the factory software.