WEP key wireless cracking made easy
Print storyGone in 60 seconds
Posted in Enterprise Security, 4th April 2007 15:43 GMT
Free whitepaper – Vulnerability management buyer's checklist
Code breakers have discovered a technique for extracting a 104-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) key in under a minute.
Cryptographic weaknesses with the first generation wireless encryption standard have been known for years, but the latest attack requires the capture of just a tenth of the number of packets required by previous approaches. The technique allows for 50 per cent probability of the recovery of a 104-bit WEP key in around a minute (on a 802.11g network running at full speed), and with the capture of 40,000 packets. Doubling the capture period extends the probability of capturing the key to 95 per cent.
Processing this data on a standard PC to reveal the key takes as little as three seconds, as explained in a paper by researchers Erik Tews and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann and Andrei Pyshkin of Darmstadt Technical University here. As before, the code breaking approach relies on exploiting cryptographic weaknesses in the RC4 stream cipher used by WEP that have been known about since 2001.
The latest attack illustrates the need to use the new WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard, which is far more resistant to attack, though infrequently used, even on wireless networks that employ any form of defences. ®
Free whitepaper – The shortcut guide to managing certificate lifecycles
Image spam: the threat returns
Jump start your Application Security initiatives
The shortcut guide to managing certificate lifecycles
Avoiding 7 common mistakes of IT security compliance
Email continuity
Google cloud told to encrypt itself
Buggy 'smart meters' open door to power-grid botnet
Chinese firm hits back at cyberspy claims
BlockMaster SafeStick hardware-encrypted USB drive