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WPA Encryption Cracked In 60 Seconds
carusoj writes "Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. Last November, security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken, but the Japanese researchers have taken the attack to a new level. The earlier attack worked on a smaller range of WPA devices and took between 12 and 15 minutes to work. Both attacks work only on WPA systems that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) algorithm. They do not work on newer WPA 2 devices or on WPA systems that use the stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm."
You'll be able to provide more free wireless too!
TFA lists AES. I'm curious what else is considered useful. Anybody using hacked routers to run tomato and the like are very welcome to discuss their security thoughts.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Backtrack really doesn't "do" anything, it's just an awesome integration of separate tools.
aircrack is the base package that would most probably implement this.
Lucky for me, I use WEP, so I'm safe.
The original paper is here
And the most important piece of information comes at the very end of the summary (just not to diminish the sensation or prevent FUD):
They do not work on newer WPA 2 devices or on WPA systems that use the stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm.
They have just found a way to decrypt a packet using the WEP chopchop algorithm. Master key can't still be recovered. Move along, this isn't news
Linux forever
Are you *positive* that the VPN connection is uncrackable? If it's going over wireless, then if someone is recording the cyphertext, they will be able to recover the VPN cyphertext out of the WPA cyphertext. If they then know of a way to recover the 'cleartext' from the VPN cyphertext, then you are still leaking your data. If the VPN system is so secure, why aren't we using it for the wireless connection? That is, make the wireless network a VPN using the same algorithms you use for your VPN?
While I am not commenting on the security or lack of security in a VPN connection, I believe I can answer this. The simple fact is, most routers can't handle the encryption load of a full blown VPN, especially one with multiple users. Even dedicated routers that are made to handle this can only handle 5 or 10 at a time until you start plopping down the big bucks for the serious VPN routers.
So using VPN level of encryption on a home router is not going to happen until processing power is increased dramatically on the cheap CPUs they use.
Actually, it is a mathematical fact that OTP is perfectly unbreakable. P=NP doesn't enter into it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I don't know why people insist on using WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc..
I just made my SSID "Logon for only $3.99 per minute"
Haven't ever seen my neighbors log on even once.
_
Although, thinking about this more, it makes me wonder - does anyone ever 'record' encrypted traffic from targets of interest, in the hopes that, maybe right now they can't crack it, but maybe in 2 or 3 years, they'll be able to crack it, and if they have a 'recording' of the cyphertext, which they can later decrypt, they can get possibly interesting info/data (data could very easily still be useful and interesting 3 or 5 years from now, particularly things like state/corporate secrets, but even more mundane info like people's social security numbers, answers to online password 'reset' security questions, etc).
One of the parts of Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" I enjoyed the most was when one character sent another character a message encoded with, as I recall, 4096-bit security, and the character receiving it, while his computer was decoding it, went through the mental gymnastics of comparing the speed of prime factoring algorithms, taking into account Moore's Law and how many new computers were coming online, to conclude that whatever was in the message, it was meant to stay secret for at least 40 years, as opposed to the sender's usual 10 year threshold, making the recipient particularly nervous about the contents.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
TKIP was fundamentally broken, by design. We knew that. TKIP was invented as an intermediate encryption that could run on the same hardware that WEP ran on. It allowed router manufacturers to use something better than WEP without having to beef-up their hardware. It worked well, and bought several years before it was completely broken. Anyone who has a router using TKIP bought at a bad time, and is stuck with something that's only a little better than WEP. The solution is to buy a router that supports WPA2, which has real AES encryption.
Oh, fer crying out loud, if you're going to use wikipedia notation, at least *check* wikipedia first:
The Vernam-Mauborgne one-time pad was recognized early on as difficult to break, but its special status was only established by Claude Shannon some 25 years later. He proved, using information theory considerations, that the one-time pad has a property he termed perfect secrecy; that is, the ciphertext C gives absolutely no additional information about the plaintext
Yay solidarity! =)
The original question was "The question is can anything be secure in the long term if an attacker can monitor the conversation between alice and bob 24/7?" Presumably then you eventually run out of one time pads. OTP is secure iff you have either a shared source of randomness or have some other secure channel to transmit the material. And if you have a shared source of randomness you need then to have that source somehow secure. There are good reasons we don't use one time pads on a daily basis.
TKIP (Timed Key Interchange Protocol, for those who don't know) does have a weak spot. This is that the new key is sent out from the access point on a regular basis. Cisco's implementation (supported by most companies that supply 802.11a equipment) makes two changes. One is that the time value set is a maximum value (the key change interval is actually random). The other is that the new key is sent via the encrypted session. You therefore have to have cracked the old key to receive the new key.
It will be interesting to see if that is discussed when the paper is presented.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32(King James Version)
Ah - the "If you want to outrun a bear, the key is not to outrun the bear - it's to outrun the person behind you" principle. That sort of wisdom ranks up there with, "Women are like square roots - if they're under 16, you should do them in your head."
Take that however you will.