The side effect of withdrawing support for an insecure and outdated protocol is that Apple is (finally) forcing users of its latest mobile and desktop operating systems – as well as operators of VPN systems – to take the step toward a more secure internet browsing experience. Because L2TP doesn’t provide strong encryption or authentication by itself, in most cases it is implemented along with IPSec. IPSec is a set of protocols used to secure internet traffic that provides much stronger security than PPTP, while IKEv2 is more secure than IPSec since it supports AES 128, AES 192, AES 256 encryption. In a support document updated in mid-2017, Apple suggests users deploy other, more secure protocols for user-based authentication, such as L2TP (Layer To Tunneling Protocol), IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange version 2) and IPSec (Internet Protocol Security), and even mentions several SSL VPN clients available in the iOS App Store.

Microsoft's security advisory document released in 2012 talks about the issue caused by known cryptographic weaknesses in the MS-CHAPv2 protocol that allows hackers to exploit its vulnerabilities to obtain a user’s credentials.Īpple Recommends Using More Safe Protocols The latter is widely used as an authentication method in PPTP-based VPNs. Actually, even Microsoft, the creator of the protocol, recommends not using PPTP or MS-CHAPv2 (Microsoft Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol version 2). Why Apple Dropped Support for PPTPĪpple has rightfully made this move due to the fact that PPTP has failed numerous security analyses in which serious security vulnerabilities in the protocol had been discovered. That, however, doesn’t mean they will connect to the VPN server. iOS and macOS will display an error message informing users about the security risk that a connection via PPTP represents, and the only option users have is to select “OK”. In other words, if you have set up a VPN server using PPTP, iOS and macOS Sierra users will no longer be able to connect to it. Even though the protocol is still available in earlier versions of its mobile and desktop software, Apple has dropped support for PPTP for security reasons. Starting with macOS Sierra and iOS 10, Apple has withdrawn support for one of the methods of implementing a virtual private networks (VPN), the point-to-point tunneling protocol (PPTP).

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