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Does anyone know if it's possible to create a password protected device-to-device (adhoc) network on OS X Yosemite?

Here's a link to the Apple documentation for OS X Mountain Lion however there does not seem to be a "Require Password checkbox" option in OS X Yosemite.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH10666?locale=en_US

EDIT:

There does not seem to be a password option when going to "menu bar --> wifi icon --> 'Create Network…'".

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  • Are you asking how to setup a virtual router with OS X?
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 18:34
  • It depends what you mean by 'virtual router'. I just want to create a small wireless network to use between devices so that I can connect and transfer files, use screen sharing, etc… I can do this easily enough using the instructions posted above but in OS X Yosemite there does not seem to be an option to specify a password which is far from ideal since anyone could connect to the network…
    – aidanharris
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 18:36
  • So you enable internet sharing and then are presented with the following prompt minus the require password checkbox? You are using a wired ethernet connection right?
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 18:40
  • See my edit to the question. There is no "require password" option…
    – aidanharris
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 18:40
  • Because you are trying to share a wireless connection from the looks of it. You would need two 802.11 adapaters to do that.
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 18:46

1 Answer 1

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I wouldn't be surprised if there's no way at all to enable that, and even if there was, it would only really give a false sense of security.

IBSS has never been that well-adopted of a feature, so Apple has never invested much effort in making it great. They left in the ability to enable WEP all this time, even though it provides a false sense of security since WEP was irreparably cracked more than a decade ago.

Implementing WPA or WPA2 for IBSS is tricky because IBSS is fully peer-to-peer (and not just point-to-point, but with any number of peers in the IBSS network), so every node has to act as supplicant and authenticator with the other nodes, and keep track of per-link keys for communication with all the other nodes, since there's no central AP to authenticate everyone. Apple never implemented this, and I wouldn't be surprised if almost no one else ever did either.

Apple probably decided as of Yosemite that providing the false sense of security of WEP was worse than providing no security at all, so they dropped support.

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  • Thanks for the answer. It looks like I'm out of luck then unless I use Internet Sharing.
    – aidanharris
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 19:59

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