WEP cracked in 60 Seconds

[Tom_ONI]

Thought this might be interesting to some of you guys.

 

From The Register yesterday:

 

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

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/04/wireless_code_cracking/

 

I appreciate a lot of kids wont be able to/want to do this - but there is bound to be one smart one who can.

 

Tom

[Geoff]

I covered this seperately on Wednesday in the Security forum.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7697

[Tom_ONI]

My Bad, should have searched first.

 

Although its interesting that networks and security are so interlinked these days this is as much a network issue as security.

 

Tom

[Geoff]

My Bad, should have searched first.

 

No problem.

 

Although its interesting that networks and security are so interlinked these days

 

I agree but the security forum covers broader subject matter than just network security topics (at least that's the intention).

 

This is as much a network issue as security.

 

Indeed, however 'sensitive' topics like this should be kept in the security forum as it's not indexed by Google (Just like FFS!) and is unreadable to unregistered users. Not my idea, but that's how other people wanted it.