I was recently at an Astro Imaging Complex where several of us were running ASIAirPlus for imaging and were running Station Mode through the Complex' wifi network. I had an issue where one of the other users inadvertantly got into my ASIAir and changed my Plan mid-session.

As I've come to find out, if one is in Station Mode then anyone with the ASI app who is on the same wifi can get access to my ASI and modify the Plans or Autorun (or anything else that is configurable via the app). This happens even if one has a unique ASIAir wifi name and password.

Is there any way to prevent this access? If not are there any plans to implement a solution. This is a pretty big vulnerability - especially in these types of situations or at Star Parties

    AstroSavy Thank you very much for your feedback and support, i passed this to our ASIAIR team.

    18 days later

    I am copying my post in a different forum. I think you and I were at the same dark site. I was lucky to not lose any information but a month prior I had someone apparently ready to take control of my scope. Here is my other post and my suggested fix:

    I travel to a dark site that has WLAN that is used for Station Mode connections. The reason to use their WiFi is that I can operate my ASIAirs from a warm building at the dark sky site.

    However, everybody that is running the ASIAir app has access to any ASIAir that is connected to the WLAN by Station Mode. If I lose connectivity or use the menu to Switch Device, then I am given a list of all the ASIAir devices on the network and I can connect to any of them. Last month, somebody accidently connected to mine and was changing my target and other things. I was able to stop them but this month another person lost hours of image time because someone accidently made changes.
    Additionally, if you access someone's ASIAir, you can go to the network settings and view their password for the ASIAir on-board wifi.

    ZWO, here is my suggestion. In the Station Mode settings, add a checkbox with the label "Authenticate to Connect". If checked, then have a field appear that says "Authentication Code" that allows up to 8 characters for a code. Then, the first time I try to connect to an ASIAir device, ask for the code, validate that it is correct, and keep it in memory of the App on my tablet to allow me to just reconnect without re-entering the code when I lose connection to that device. This would fix the issue with people accessing other people's AAP at large gatherings that have wifi available for Station Mode.

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