Stronger Encryption for Wi-Fi

sp00 writes "The first products certified to support Wi-Fi Protected Access 2, the latest wireless security technology, were announced by the Wi-Fi Alliance on Wednesday. The Wi-Fi Alliance says WPA2 is a big improvement on earlier wireless security standards, such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which hackers have found easy to circumvent. It includes Advanced Encryption Standard, which supports 128-bit, 192-bit and 256-bit keys."

Comments

Sssssh!

[FooAtWFU]

Please don't tell my neighbors about this technology. Thanks. :)

upgrades to old equipment

[the_denman]

The real question is will the manufacturers come out with new drivers/firmware to take advantage of this new technology?

Re:upgrades to old equipment

[aredubya74]

Nope. They'll come out with new equipment, which we will buy. Sigh.

Good

[ergo98]

I feel I speak for wireless users everywhere when I say "Good". What more is there to say?

Re:Good

[SoSueMe]

I feel I speak for wireless users everywhere when I say "Wha?"

Sadly, this is more prevalent than we like to think.

overhead

[a3217055]

All these new ways of encrypting data over wireless is great. Security of data is a good service. But how much will it cost, do you need more expensive hardware to create such encryption, will there be a loss of performance and other related factors. These are important and must be tested before we start saying that wap2 is the world's greatest thing for wireless encryption.

WPA2?

[Trygve]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't WPA2 just the WiFi Alliance being stuborn about what to call 802.11i? I mean, WPA was just supposed to be 802.11i minus everything that required hardware upgrades. WPA2 is just 802.11i, only not a real standard, ooh boy!

Re:WPA2?

[lizrd]

Not exactly. Wi-Fi/WPA/WPA-2 are all industry standards based on the various 802.11? IEEE standards. The difference is that WECA (Wireless Ethernet Compatability Alliance) actually does testing rather than just publishing standards like IEEE does. In order to get the fancy sticker on the package you need to pay a couple of grand and get your product tested to the standards. The benefit of certification is that you have some idea that the product was actaully implemented to the standard correctly.

That said, WPA-2 provides basically zero benefit over WPA. WPA relies on the same RC-4 algorithm as WEP, but has a few patches put in place to resolve the problems it had. The most important one is using a new key for each frame. Given a choice between an algorithm that can be broken given 11MB of data and one that has no known attacks, do you think that it matters which you use to encrypt 1500 bytes? Not really.

The good news about WPA-2/802.11i (same thing, just certified and a less scary name for the PHBs) is that it breaks hardware compatibility, and that means there's a chance that things have been done right this time.

Re:Question

[ericpi]

I believe MAC filters are inherently less secure than encryption: The MAC addresses, I believe, are sent in the clear (i.e., not encrypted), so all someone has to do is listen to which devices are already operating on the network, then spoof their MAC to match.

"Easy to circumvent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the known WEP attacks are based on receiving weak IV frames (usually after sifting through gigabytes of data). Modern WiFi chipsets (i.e., those made within the last 2 years or so) do not send weak IV frames all that often, if at all.

It is not as easy as everyone says. Try it with some brand-new, high quality equipment and you may be surprised at the result.

Hmm

[Mattwolf7]

I doubt this is going to take off. Since we have enough problems with people enabling protection in the first place. Unless companys start requiring it, which won't happen because my local ISP gives you a wireless access point with service. But they do not enable WEP or any encryption on the devices.

Oh well mine is enabled

----
Free IPods

Re:Hmm

[gad_zuki!]

>Unless companys start requiring it

That's a bit out there. Do you really want the ISP doing what they think is best for you (or them)? "Oh, so you're running a webserver." Block port 80. "Oh, so you aren't using Microsoft's Firewall?" It gets installed by a tech and they charge you 50 bucks for the trouble, even though you have a hardware firewall, etc. Trust me, you don't want to be punished by rules set for the lowest common denominator.

The problem here is the problem we see everywhere when it comes to computers: usability. WEP is counter-intuitive to implement. WPA is a step in the right direction with a single password (as people understand the concept of passwords). The new MS wireless manager in SP2 goes a lot way to simplifying wifi also.

Make no mistake about it, there are lot of people who tried to get WEP to work only to have it fail. I know I've had bizarre issues with WEP that could only be fixed with a hard reset on the device and falling back to default settings, a firmware downgrade, upgrading firmware on the card, generating new keys every so often because the thing just didn't like the old ones, playing around with advanced wireless settings, etc. I don't think that level of troubleshooting should be expected from a typical end user.

So...

[NETHED]

So now instead of just a few hours with a current computer, it will take a bit longer, maybe a week or something. Then someone will figure out that the key string is MAC dependent based on time signitures, or something, and there we go, no more security.

I have no illusions about the "security" of WiFi, no matter how encrypted it may be. The signal is traveling through open space for anyone to look at, and if you look at enough of the signal, you can find the pattern. This just increases the processing power needed by the AP and Card, further pushing the development of more advanced, procs. (Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this)

I understand that corperations are interested in this for security, but for an average joe like me, I keep my access point wide open for anyone to use. If you want to look at my GF's reciepe's or our photos, go right ahead.

Security is only as important as you make it to be.

Why not get users to use what they have

[the_denman]

Using 128 bit encription on most residental points will take several weeks of listening to break (correct me if I am wrong here) Shouldn't we concentrate on convinceing users on just doing something.

Re:Why not get users to use what they have

[gad_zuki!]

> on most residental points will take several weeks

Try months (and thats on old equipment with no firmware upgrade to filter out weak frames). Try not getting spotted sitting there with your laptop and running airsnort all day.

Do these WEP fatalists also refuse to lock their cars/house doors because anyone with some skill and one easily gotten tool can open their doors? Do these people also make their own padlocks in their basement because every manufacturer has a master key? Do these people also use blank passwords because cracking NTLM or most passwd files is very doable, etc.

Flaw fixed?

[sploo22]

One of WEP's biggest design flaws has been that all data is encrypted with the same key. Sure, there needs to be some shared secret for authentication, but the actual data transfer should use a negotiated key known only to the user and the AP. WEP is all right for authentication, but when it comes to security it's useless against other authenticated users.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to use something like this for non-broadcase Ethernet either, now that I think of it.

802.1x

[Anonymous Coward]

Our network uses a 802.1x system with dynamic WEP keys.. the system requires you to re-authenticate (handled automatically by 802.1x client software) with a randomly generated key every 15 minutes.

What is the real advantage to WPA here?

Re:802.1x

[ImaLamer]

Why not solve the problem by putting another line of authentication in place?

My school *shudder* has access points in many of the labs but after a student said he was going to "hack" into it there was a simple warning:

1. We know the MAC address to every computer in the building...
2. We keep logs of MAC addresses that don't match our set (apparently he went around reprogramming the MAC addresses to a now defunkt card maker's line for easy log watching, except for one lab which was un-re-programmable)
3. Breaking the WEP key is a crime, during the investigation we will try to track your MAC to you (hope you didn't pay with a credit card - your breaking into "protected" systems, in fact a federal crime)
4. You can't get anywhere, you must authenticate through the NT (blah) server for network access
5. It's pointless

Really, it made sense. He simply stated that there was no point in getting a signal without access rights. The man's first job was to secure the wired network. Once the AP's were put in, it wasn't a problem.

Could you run wild on your companies network by just plugging into the next available switch?

If so, fix that problem first.

Re:Question

[ericpi]

At first, you don't trasmit anything. (Since, as you point out, the whitelist would prevent the access point from responding to you, anyway.) However, you just listen to the existing legitimate traffic. Then clone your device with the same MAC as one of these legitimate (and already on the whitelist) devices.

Pointless..

[mcknation]

As long as these acess points are shipped with encryption turned *OFF* by default this is like pissing in the wind. It could be 1 billion bit one time pads and woulnd't make any difference. In my neighboorhood there are 10 unencrypted networks....all on the default channels. Out of the box straight onto the network is how they are set up. Joe Sixpack doesn't have time to deal with encryption.

*don't worry much residential war drivers..there will still be free lunch for a long time to come... /-McK

Re:Pointless..

[subreality]

Not pointless.

Even if it's turned off by default, the ability to turn on good crypto is perfectly useful.

AES protects entire frame

[jonabbey]

I believe the AES implementation they are using actually does encrypt the ethernet (MAC) address, unlike WEP. (See Tying It All Together in this article for corroboration of that.)

WPA2 with AES is the real deal.

Missing a point here...

[z3021017]

People talk about WPA security and how it's important, but the fact is most home users don't even change the default password for their wireless routers.

So I have to upgrade...again?

[Powertrip]

So this means to take advantage of the latest security, I would again have to upgrade all my AP's and Clients... $ $ $ When will this whole industry be commoditized enough that we have 'soft' radios for wireless (Like AC97 Audio) that allow us more flexibility in upgrading older hardware to newer standards? Heck, with a true soft-wireless chipset we could use one RF device for WiFi and Bluetooth and whatever they dream up next...

Re:Does this means...

[brain159]

Sufficient for what?

Keeping a serious attacker away from your data, if it's specifically you he's after? Possibly not.

Keeping a casual war(mode-of-transport)'er out of your WLAN to stop him leeching your bandwidth? Probably.

its about time

[presmike]

you guys can piss and moan all you want but AES is rock solid. This is a great solution for those who don't have time resources or knowledge to use 802.11x with RADIUS. Finanaly a secure encruption scheme for home users who know absolutely nothing about encryption and how it works. I give it 2 thumbs up :)

Actually...

[TPS Report]

...keep my access point wide open for anyone to use. If you want to look at my GF's reciepe's or our photos, go right ahead.

Yesss.. that sounds like a great idea.

However, if you don't mind, I think I'll skip all the "take a look at my recipies" formalities and go straight to

- sniffing your email passwords,
- reading your email,
- sending email under your account from your IP,
- using your wireless access point to spam,
- surf some underage porn using your IP,
- seed my "next big worm" from your connection,
- browse/sample your internal network from the IP your WAP so conveniently gave me,
- and finish up by making various explicit threats against the president on the newsgroups while simultaneously using your cable connection to make VoIP calls to the NSA and reading them some of your previously mentioned fine recipes.

I almost forgot to say thank you for the free access point. Where are my manners...
;)

VPN

[mrph]

Why not just set up a VPN? For example, OpenVPN is quite easy to configure and maintain, and also
allows for a variety of client systems to connect.

I'm thinking of setting up a small WLAN using old equipment that i can get almost for free.
I would just plug another NIC in my OpenBSD firewall and keep nothing but the necessary ports for the VPN open.
There's a broad range of encryption and authentication methods available, and if the one I use
would be too weak, I could just change to another one instead of having
to buy new hardware such as PCMCIA cards, APs etc.