You guys are not going to believe what's happening with 6GHz Wi-Fi because this is one of those "the tech works but trust assumptions broke" stories that makes my skin crawl in the best way possible. Here's the deal: since 2018, federal regulators have required automated frequency coordination (AFC) for anyone running a high-power unlicensed access point on the 6GHz band so Wi-Fi doesn't knock out licensed fixed services like those used by public safety and critical infra nearby. Microsoft and Google actually teamed up to build a joint AFC system with an independent operator, which sounds great in theory but hides a massive structural flaw that just came to light. The whole thing relies on the client reporting its own location data before it can get approved for operation — no server-side verification of where those coordinates are coming from. So you have this multi-billion dollar shared spectrum infrastructure built entirely around trusting what an unauthenticated device tells it about itself, which is basically a "trust me bro" architecture at national scale and that has already been shown to be exploitable by someone with basic software knowledge.
The actual mechanism of attack is surprisingly simple yet terrifying because one bad actor can poison the local AFC region for everyone else nearby — think GPS spoofing but via Wi-Fi management frames. An attacker runs a rogue AP broadcasting fake location data, and that gets registered in the system as legitimate; meanwhile every real device within range trying to connect is now routed through the untrusted node instead of the genuine one, effectively hijacking local traffic flow. For a home user this means your smart devices end up talking to someone else's server but for critical systems — fire department radios, hospital telemetry on 6GHz backhaul, municipal networks — it opens up a vector where malicious actors can degrade or intercept communications by simply injecting false location coordinates into the AFC database. They donve even need physical access; they just need software running on an unhardened AP that automatically registers with the system and lies about its position. This isn't theoretical either because we're already seeing proof-of-concept exploits showing how easily client reporting can be manipulated, and for systems where 6GHz is a legitimate backbone this matters far more than just another Wi-Fi vulnerability on your feed.
Source: https://www.darkreading.com/perimeter/6-ghz-wi-fi-flaws-disrupt-critical-systems
The actual mechanism of attack is surprisingly simple yet terrifying because one bad actor can poison the local AFC region for everyone else nearby — think GPS spoofing but via Wi-Fi management frames. An attacker runs a rogue AP broadcasting fake location data, and that gets registered in the system as legitimate; meanwhile every real device within range trying to connect is now routed through the untrusted node instead of the genuine one, effectively hijacking local traffic flow. For a home user this means your smart devices end up talking to someone else's server but for critical systems — fire department radios, hospital telemetry on 6GHz backhaul, municipal networks — it opens up a vector where malicious actors can degrade or intercept communications by simply injecting false location coordinates into the AFC database. They donve even need physical access; they just need software running on an unhardened AP that automatically registers with the system and lies about its position. This isn't theoretical either because we're already seeing proof-of-concept exploits showing how easily client reporting can be manipulated, and for systems where 6GHz is a legitimate backbone this matters far more than just another Wi-Fi vulnerability on your feed.
Source: https://www.darkreading.com/perimeter/6-ghz-wi-fi-flaws-disrupt-critical-systems