MR33 SSID disappears and reappears with out password

[DHAnderson]

I just had some strange and worrisome behavior happen at a client.

The have a MR33 and called to say the Guest network is not showing up on people's devices.  The Guest is configured with a SSID that has a password.  It is not using Meraki Guest as the 10.0.0.0/8 overlaps with an internal network.

When I went to their location, my phone connected up with the Guest network without any issue.  I checked with other users and they could now also see the network, but there was no lock icon on their phones, indicating the SSID did not have a password.  I told my phone to forget the Guest network, then I connected to it.  I was not asked for a password.  I repeated this twice to be sure a password was not required.

I checked Meraki Dashboard, and Pre-Shared Key was still selected and the password was still showing.  I checked Air Marshal but no Spoofs or Rouge SSIDs were found.  There are no Air Marshal events for the last month in the event log.

I rebooted the Access point and when it came back up, the Guest network password was working as it should.

I have not seen this behavior before.

The MR33 firmware version is MR 25.14

Has anyone else seen this?

[NolanHerring · Accepted solution]

I have not seen that, but sounds like a bug. However, do yourself a favor and quick, and downgrade to 25.13.

25.14 was pulled due to too many issues, which maybe what you ran into

[Net]

Yes, I have seen it before. I think it is because of the config not being up-to-date. After the reboot has it happened again? 

For me, I initially set up SSID with password1 and changed password to password 2 but still I was able to access the SSID with password 1.

[DHAnderson]

Nothing had changed in months, so there were no new config changes.

[PhilipDAth]

When you connect to the SSID with no password - do you show up in the dashboard?

I'm wondering if there is another non-Meraki AP configured to use the same SSID.  Perhaps even an attacker.

If the SSID is advertising it is using WPA2 then it is using WPA2.  It can't suddenly change to having no WPA2.  So to suddenly connect with no password that means beacons are being sent saying the network does not need WPA2, and the AP doing the advertising is accepting that.

Yep, I think it is more likely their is another AP in the mix.  You could try turning of all the Meraki APs and see if you can still connect to confirm this.

[DHAnderson]

I looked at Air Marshal and there were 0 spoofs and 0 Rouge SSIDs. I went through all the Other SSIDs and did not see any matching the guest. I also looked at all Air Marshal events in the event log and there were no events.

I have tested Air Marshal in the past and I am confident of it's operation.

So, since all my other clients were on 25.13, I took the advice to downgrade to that.