Rogue devices showing up on windows 8 network in file exporer.

I have this same issue.  I assume this is because WPA2 does not protect the physical and MAC layers (after all, everyone, even the wireless network owner, needs a minimum level of wireless access in order to get onto the network). I suspect that the rogue cell phones attempted some sort of 'meaningful' access attempt in order to be seen in the Windows 8 networks view?  Or is all it takes is for the rogue cell phone to show it's owner that there is SSID 'xyz' available that is 'secure'? Just curious.

George

I have this exact issue. My network is protected and passwords have been changed frequently yet  phones appear on my network without IPs

This appears to be a situation where locally connected devices i.e: a neighbour's phone may be shown in your network. This is not a security problem. As long as your internet connection is protected you should not be able to access the phone's files and it can't access any of yours.

 

Can you explain to me how a secure wireless network is going to have a neighbor's phone connect to it without being authenticated?

Or, can you provide a link to Microsoft documentation that explains how this is possible?

At this point, I am a bit skeptical about your possible answer but, hey, I don't pretend to know everything so I would like to read up more on this if you can provide me with documentation.

Thanks in advance.

I don't blame you at all.  I'd be curious as well.

Sounds like the Network Discovery functionality returns stale results.

Probably a more accurate list of machines on the same machine's subnet could be displayed this way:

1. Press [Win key]+[X].
2. Select Command Prompt.
3. At the command prompt type net view and press [enter].

This will display a list of machines on the same subnet as the machine you are on.

In other works, if your machine is 192.168.2.10. it will scan all IP's between 192.168.2.0 and 192.168.2.255 to determine if it can find any machines.

Hope that helps.

If it's showing up in a network discovery scan, it had an IP address at one time.  A device cannot connect to a network without an IP address.

 

You can also ping by name as well if you don't know the IP address.

 

Sounds like to me what you are seeing is someone's mobile phone that has connected to your wireless network.  Since these devices are mobile yiou won't see them there all the time.

 

If they are listed and the device isn't present, they should disappear as soon as the IP lease expires.

 

In my personal opinion, as long as you have security enabled on your wireless network, this is a non-issue.  If a mobile phone has WIFI enabled they will scan for local WIFI networks they can attach to.

 

If you want to extra secure, disable DHCP on your wireless network and then set up your machines with staic IPs.  This way no other device will be able to connect to your network and get issued an IP unless you specifically set it up.  But for the average person this is overkill.

 

 

 

 

Hey Steve,

Thank you for the information.  It bugs me even though it may not be a threat.  Just high anxiety.  lol.  FYI...the only phones that have connected to my network are apple devices.  The two devices that have popped up are a Samsung galaxy and a  Samsung SPH-L710.  So...just not sure how they are getting popping up all day long.  I also just bought this computer yesterday.  Just frustrating.  I did ping the device names and nothing came back.  So they must not be there. 

Thank you again for the responses!

Phil