WPA wifi hack – gone in sixty seconds

28 Aug 09 14:12 by AdamT in category Industry, Uncategorized

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Japanese security researchers have devised a method of cracking WPA wireless encryption in less than a minute.

gone_in_sixty_seconds1

The hack was developed by Toshihiro Ohigashi (Hiroshima University) and Masakatu Morii (Kobe University), building on the German-developed Beck-Tews attack which takes around 15 minutes.

The hack targets the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) version of WiFi Protected Access (WPA) wireless encryption. It cannot retrieve a WPA encryption key, but it does allow the perpetrator to read and spoof data packets.

Wireless networks using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) based encryption are immune to the hack.

8 Comments on WPA wifi hack – gone in sixty seconds

DrageMester: Posts: 19885; Posted on: 28 Aug 09 14:21

Link to the research paper describing the method of attack:

http://jwis2009.nsysu.edu.tw/locatio...20on%20WPA.pdf

Hemispasm: Posts: 5493; Posted on: 28 Aug 09 14:24

I guess that companies that care about their network security already use AES or the likes (if they are using wireless networks which I doubt). For the average JDs like me; oh well I cant imagine a situation where someone would be interested in "spoofing" into my data packets anyways

DrageMester: Posts: 19885; Posted on: 28 Aug 09 14:34

I'm already running WPA2-AES at home but I guess I'll have to look into whether it's possible to do the same at the office.

deadite66: Posts: 22; Posted on: 28 Aug 09 22:38

the media is hyping the risks, they still can't get your key or read you data.

Hemispasm: Posts: 5493; Posted on: 28 Aug 09 23:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadite66

..hey still can't get your key or read you data.

Not an expert but doesn't "...to read and spoof data packets..." mean reading the data moving through the network at the time?

Zod: Posts: 724; Posted on: 29 Aug 09 07:06

I use wpa2-aes on my home network so i'm fine. But i've been using it for a few years now. I figure its only a matter of time before it gets hacked. Hopefully the wireless network people are planning ahead and developing a new wireless encryption standard?

deadite66: Posts: 22; Posted on: 29 Aug 09 10:43

from grc newsserver

Quote:

> I assume that this means you can recover the whole key and
> > start decoding traffic in real time.

steve gibson replied

Quote:

Fortunately not. This is definitely NOT a key recovery attack.

It only allows an attacker to determine a single SHORT packet's
pseudo-random XORing bit stream ... from which another packet
can be synthesized.

Yes, you could then use ARP spoofing to insert yourself "in the
middle" ... by synthesizing a single packet, but you still could
not really do anything from there (other than a denial of
service) since you still don't have any other packets' bit-
streams.

It's an improvement on the previous TKIP attack, and it means
that moving from TKIP to AES cipher is still a good idea ... but
this isn't a huge "end of the world" event by any means.

also fron the remote-exploit forums
http://forums.remote-exploit.org/150062-post43.html

Hemispasm: Posts: 5493; Posted on: 29 Aug 09 13:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadite66

from grc newsserver

steve gibson replied

also fron the remote-exploit forums
http://forums.remote-exploit.org/150062-post43.html

Aha I see, thanx for info

WPA wifi hack – gone in sixty seconds

8 Comments on WPA wifi hack – gone in sixty seconds

WPA wifi hack – gone in sixty seconds

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