In June the Wi-Fi Alliance announced a new WI-FI encryption standard, WPA3, after WPA2 was soundly KRACKed.

The new version of Wireless Protected Access is resistant to dictionary attacks and will block authentication requests after a number of failed attempts and will also implement “forward secrecy”, meaning attackers who discover a WIFI network’s password will not be able to decrypt traffic recorded before the key was discovered.

The standard also implements WI-FI Easy Connect, which would let users set up the WiFi WPA3 options of a companion device that does not have a screen, such as a smart switch or lightbulb.

WPA3 is currently optional for newly released devices, but will ultimately become the standard. It is not currently supported in Windows 10, but today’s release of Windows 10 19H1 SDK includes a new API which appears to suggest support is coming soon.

The new API reads:

namespace Windows.Networking.Connectivity {

public enum NetworkAuthenticationType {

Wpa3 = 10,

Wpa3Sae = 11,

}

}

WPA3 is the enterprise version, while WPA3 SAE is the consumer version with Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE) , replacing Pre-shared Key (PSK) in WPA2-Personal.

WPA3 is interoperable with WPA2, so the support is likely only needed for sites which takes security very seriously. Those facilities will likely have to wait till early 2019 for the feature to become available to all Windows 10 users.