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WEP Broken Even Worse
collin.m writes in with news of results out of Darmstadt. Erik Tews and others there have demonstrated how to recover a 104-bit WEP key in under a minute, requiring the capture of fewer than 10% the number of packets the previous best method called for. The paper is here (PDF). Quoting: "We were able to extend Klein's attack and optimize it for usage against WEP. Using our version, it is possible to recover a 104 bit WEP key with probability 50% using just 40,000 captured packets... for 85,000 data packets [the success probability is] about 95%... 40,000 packets can be captured in less than one minute under good condition. The actual computation takes about 3 seconds and 3 MB main memory on a Pentium-M 1.7 GHz..."
Can ARC4 be used securely at all? Or are WEP's failings its own fault?
On a somewhat related note, I'm annoyed that wireless encryption was implemented in hardware. Nintendo DS's wireless is worthless to me since the encryption system can't be upgraded.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Hasn't most everyone moved to WPA-PSK by now?
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Case Dismissed!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
For some reason I can't get the paper to load, but anyway, does this still depend on weak initialization vectors?
- plus.php )
I know that the original attack did depend on that, and most software and basestations have since been configured to avoid those weak IVs. I know that some stuff (like Nokia's basestations) are still weak agains the original attack (at least when tested with Kismet), however, against Cisco Aironets and almost any newer hardware I haven't been able to see this weakness in action when trying out if it really works...
(Terabeam uses the term "WEPPlus" about this - see http://www.terabeam.com/solutions/whitepapers/wep
Anyway, if this is just extension of the original attack, then it still requires those weak IVs to exist.
Or is it something completely new?
This may be a dumb question, but why does TFA only refer to 40 and 104 bit WEP when the more common variants seem to be 64 and 128 bits?
G-Force music visualization
I use 56-bit WEP and I've never had.... ATTN: YOU HAVE WON THE IRISH LOTTERY PLEASE respons immediately to... ...so I don't see why it is a big deal?
Some settling may occur during posting.
WEP insecure! Coming up at 6PM Bill Gates still really really rich.
My understanding is that it should be easy enough to implement WPA on older (.11a/b) hardware, but companies much rather sell end user new hardware (.11g etc.) than spending development time to upgrade old hardware (that does not generate additional revenue.) This is evident in that Apple's old AirPort (.11b) does support WPA but other venders' (that would include YOU, Linksys) old .11a/b products do not.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
WPA "cracks" are all just brute force, which you could also do with WEP and any other encryption algorithm. It just takes fucking forever (assuming the user chose a key that was more than just a dictionary word). These WEP attacks are actually flaws in the design of the system which allow you to crack a key many times faster than brute force.
Rainbow tables, dictionaries, and the like are all just variations on brute force. They accelerate the process, but either way you're not actually breaking the encryption but instead using a crapload of processor power to try one key after another until you hit the right one.
Saying WPA is insecure because there is a brute force tool for it is like saying the a lock is insecure because I could go and start trying combinations. 1-1-1....1-1-2....1-1-3.........
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
This isn't really news. It's pretty smart that they have managed to crack WEP with so few IVs (it usually takes about 200,000 for 64bit and just under a million for 128bit) but in reality this doesn't change (or expose) WEPs inherent vuneribilities at all, for example I am currently doing my dissertation on wireless security and in tests WEP64 on average can be cracked in about 3 minutes and WEP128 in about 10 minutes so getting this down to a minute doesn't really change the fact that a hacker could capture enough packets simply by hanging around and drinking a coffee using the "old" tools.
An interesting sidenote is that the amount of time a hacker needs to be near a target WLAN for WPA-PSK is measured in seconds making it much more insecure if it has a weak passphrase than WEP is even now with crack times under a minute.
Please if you want a secure home wireless network choose WPA-PSK and make the passphrase as long and as abstract as possible, nothing else is safe -and if you have the cash... buy a radius server
Since this is Slashdot, I request a community service: Come up with a script/whatever where this is simple.
That wouldn't really increase the overall security of the network. If somebody wanted to break in, he'd just crack the WEP encryption.. I am aware of that flaw. However, I'm attempting to make the best of a bad situation - a perfect solution is not possible.
The idea is that by having the NDS and only the NDS use WEP, the opportunities for sniffing WEP packets will be limited to those times when someone's accessing the network with an NDS - as opposed to when one of our unwired computers is on (and presumably doing some net activity, either in the foreground or background), which is pretty much all the time. So if someone wanted to break in, they'd need to find out when I play Mario Kart, and do it then. Still quite feasible, but the vast majority of wireless network traffic in the household would not be using WEP, and most of the time there'd just be no WEP traffic to monitor, no WEP packets to request resend of, etc.
And then, also, there's the maintenance issues of that setup: if I monitor the activity over the WEP from time to time and want to update the key or block out WEP for a while, or do something else to shake off freeloaders - only the NDS would be affected. The laptops and such would go on happily using WPA, which is at least reasonably secure.
So, again, my question is not "is this setup secure?", it's "is this setup possible?" Or would the separate control of access methods require a separate set of hardware?
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
The only real conduit one needs in a house are a crawlspace and an attic.
Slashdot editors suck at grammar. Obviously, the words they were looking for was supposed to be more brokener.
Wireless Total Price: $80
CAT5 Total Price*: $393
Having your network compromised and your identity stolen: Priceless
This will help, sure, and be quite a detriment (since hackers will then need to figure out one more detail before being able to own your wireless network); but the fact remains that thanks to things like macchanger and other utilities, a MAC address can be very easily spoofed.
Plus, once an attacker has enough packets, he or she can divulge the necessary MAC address from those packet headers, so it's not really as great an aide as many claim...
From Wireless LAN security hall of shame:
"MAC filtering: This is like handing a security guard a pad of paper with a list of names. Then when someone comes up to the door and wants entry, the security guard looks at the person's name tag and compares it to his list of names and determines whether to open the door or not. Do you see a problem here? All someone needs to do is watch an authorized person go in and forge a name tag with that person's name. The comparison to a wireless LAN here is that the name tag is the MAC address. The MAC address is just a 12 digit long HEX number that can be viewed in clear text with a sniffer. A sniffer to a hacker is like a hammer to a carpenter except the sniffer is free. Once the MAC address is seen in the clear, it takes about 10 seconds to cut-paste a legitimate MAC address in to the wireless Ethernet adapter settings and the whole scheme is defeated. MAC filtering is absolutely worthless since it is one of the easiest schemes to attack. The shocking thing is that so many large organizations still waste the time to implement these things. The bottom line is, MAC filtering takes the most effort to manage with zero ROI (return on investment) in terms of security gain."