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Wi-Fi WPA2 Vulnerability Found
BobB-nw sends along news based on yet another press release in advance of the Black Hat conference: a claimed vulnerability in WPA2 Enterprise that leaves traffic open to a malicious insider. "...wireless security researchers say they have uncovered a vulnerability in the WPA2 security protocol, which is the strongest form of Wi-Fi encryption and authentication currently standardized and available. Malicious insiders can exploit the vulnerability, named 'Hole 196' by the researcher who discovered it at wireless security company AirTight Networks. The moniker refers to the page of the IEEE 802.11 Standard (Revision, 2007) on which the vulnerability is buried. Hole 196 lends itself to man-in-the-middle-style exploits, whereby an internal, authorized Wi-Fi user can decrypt, over the air, the private data of others, inject malicious traffic into the network, and compromise other authorized devices using open source software, according to AirTight. 'There's nothing in the standard to upgrade to in order to patch or fix the hole,' says Kaustubh Phanse, AirTight's wireless architect who describes Hole 196 as a 'zero-day vulnerability that creates a window of opportunity' for exploitation." Wi-Fi Net News has some more detail and speculation.
so rather than a hole, its more a forced proxy? a user who knows your password, is decrypting your traffic, and re-broadcasting it with different content... if this user has your password, you need to have a think about who you give your password to
portfolio
You have an awfully low UID for such a huge troll!
No. Humans make mistakes; it's a natural fact of life. To expect anything to be flawless is foolish.
Can't anybody design any piece of hardware or software that does not have some lame vulnerability?
I have. The program is called One.
Basically, it's an NPN transistor that has a voltage that goes to its base. Its collector is connected to 6V and its emitter is connected to ground. There's a 1K resistor connected to the base and emitter.
It's a binary one and it's hack proof.
Genius huh?
Next, I'll be showing my 1 pixel digital image called: One.
I'm gonna be rich!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Hans R Camenzind?
What about if the power fails?
This vulnerability is only useful if the attacker knows your WPA key. In other related news, it has been discovered that those who know your root password can delete all your files.
your home wpa2/psk environment is still safe, so don't worry about your neighbours virtual break-in.....
In other news, people on your wired ethernet segment can also see your "private" traffic. If you care so much, use SSL. Next scaremongering non-story in 3, 2, 1.
Mine doesn't make me happy at all.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"I'm starting with the man in the middle
I'm asking him to change his ways
Every packet is encrypted just a little
If you wanna make your network a safer place
Find the man in the middle and punch his face."
...even in principle to create a secure over-the-air encryption system with no out-of-band key exchange. Does there exist a proof of this?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You are the humanity's last hope as time and time again those "incompetent" engineers have failed us. This is how it's going to happen. You will get an EE degree from college. Then move onto graduate school to get a PhD in EE. Then you will become an EE professor. After 20 ~ 30 years of excellent productivity of research, you will become a chairman of IEEE and make sure that the published networking protocols are free of any vulnerabilities. Let me know how far you were able to manage through this process.
Good point. That made me think. On the surface there is nothing wrong with a hello world program. However, technologies are only as effective, secure, and efficient as the systems on which they depend.
:)
Believe it or not, I'm a "glass half full" kind of guy; I'm just paranoid
nah, things went downhill about the 50k mark... ;)
That's simply a demo of his next project, Zero.
Sure category 6 cable. As for wifi your right, why is it so hard to encrypt as needed, are chips that expensive per unit and cryptography developers that rare?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Mommy, Jimmy's sniffing my packets again, make him stop!
Actually that's not entirely a bad idea.
One frequent problem is that many people that think they are too important to obey pesky IT rules and they will give out the WPA key to any visitor that wants to check their email. Thus you have to assume to a point that the network is open and restrict things to certain MAC addresses or similar anyway.
Assuming the wireless network is completely open (but not actually doing so), sticking it on the outside of a firewall and letting laptop users in with some sort of VPN actually makes a bit of sense.
I will make sure he is gonna look like Michael Jackson himself, after I am done.
Or just create separate open wireless networks outside the firewall for visitors along with the WPA(2) wireless networks.
I've been telling people to use VPN over WiFi connections forever. Even better, put your wireless devices on the outside of the firewall, so they have no choice but to VPN in. This also makes giving a random guest access to your wireless no big deal. Any one who thinks wireless networking will ever be safer than an old-fashioned hub is deluding themselves.
One frequent problem is that many people that think they are too important to obey pesky IT rules and they will give out the WPA key to any visitor that wants to check their email.
Most enterprise grade access points will support multiple SSIDs and VLANs. It's child's play to setup a VLAN for guests that provides internet access without putting them on your corporate network. I did this at my job because I was sick of explaining to the bosses why it was a bad idea to put vendors and salespeople on our corporate network just so they could check their e-mail. It took all of ten minutes to setup with Cisco access points, switches and routers.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Of course, if you really want to limit it to visitors, you could use WPA(2)-Personal for the visitor network.
I'd say more around the 5170-mark, myself.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
nah, things went downhill about the 50k mark... ;)
Not really. Things went downhill much sooner than that. I'd have a much lower UID than I have if I had seen the need for it, but the 'first poster' morons, etc., weren't much yet around, and there wasn't much value to HAVING a Slashdot account until some time after the account system was first implemented.
Hi.
We recently had some security tests with a consulting firm and, while no WiFi test was done (we have no WiFi), I was curious and asked the guy about WiFi security. He told me that, given that there was a constant traffic, he could break any WiFi in about two hours. So I do not know if this vulnerability is a completely different thing or that guy was just too much optimistic.
Anyone does have first hand info?
Why can't
The whole point of a switch is that it sends data only to the host that it is for. So you don't get my data out your switch port. If you clone a MAC, that doesn't do the trick as it just confuses the switch and some data goes to one computer, some to the other, and the connection works poorly. Back in the day you could overload the switches in various ways and make them act like hubs, but that is also noticeable, and it doesn't work on new high quality switches.
Wired networks are actually pretty secure from snooping over all. It's not impossible, but it is damn hard.
This was explained to me once, so I feel the urge to pass on the (mis)information.
Your average crypto geek has a job, generally they teach in a university or write books or blogs. What they don't do is troll around job sites looking for "Cryptographic Developer needed to design new standard" jobs. It would be boring etc. What they do do is sit around their office on a quiet friday afternoon and pick apart current cryptographic standards, looking for flaws and such just like this. It takes a pretty special kind of person to read and understand the standards (no I am not one of them), but you can't ask them to drop everything and do it.
At a guess, I'd say that (or a variant of that) is why cryptography developers are so apparently rare.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
So, if you grant someone access to your encrypted wireless network, the person you granted access to can access data on that network? Who would have thunk it?
Just to make sure (I've never read the WPA2-EAP specs), the login username/password for access to the wireless is encrypted with another layer and isn't now cleartext to any malicious authenticated user? Any place with single sign-on for Wireless and Computers could be seriously exposed to internal baddies.
Statements like, "I could break any WiFi in about two hours," are red flags that you should higher a different security researcher...
The terms "any", "ever" or "all" are not in most security researcher's vocabularies when talking about unknowns or speculative situations.
We prefer to use terms that imply some degree of uncertainty such as "mostly", "almost never", and "nearly all" since the one thing we know
as security researchers is "trust no one", followed closely by "there is almost always an exception to the rule".
I'm certain that there is at least one "WiFi" your researcher could not break in approximately two hours, thus voiding the "any" term they used.
When in doubt just say, "Prove It."
In other words, if someone is already logged into a network they can perform a MITM attack against user(s) on that network?
Maybe it's just me, but I never considered traffic *within* a network to be secure from other network users, even on a wired network.
I hit CTRL-C when this was running and now I have complete access to the computer!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If there is a reason you don't want someone seeing it, don't Wi-Fi it. Its not a 100% solution but it gets Wi-Fi vulnerabilities out of the way. I've always been too paranoid to do anything financial over a Wi-Fi and I only get more reasons to support that paranoia.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
nah, things went downhill about the 50k mark... ;)
Not really. Things went downhill much sooner than that. I'd have a much lower UID than I have if I had seen the need for it, but the 'first poster' morons, etc., weren't much yet around, and there wasn't much value to HAVING a Slashdot account until some time after the account system was first implemented.
I know things were going downhill when they let me have an account.
Be seeing you...
This has to be one of the Best UID threads I have stumbled on to in a while, but then again what do I know. My 840k shows that I lingered for way to long before signing up. I often wonder what I would be if I had signed up around 2001 when I started reading Slashdot. Granted given the fact I have less then 20 replies or so I haven't needed it all that much. Recently been trying to change that.
Momento Mori
If the power fails, the state isn't "zero." It's indeterminate. Therefore his next project is actually called, 'Maybe'
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Is there any wi-fi crypto left standing?
I understand that only applies to Enterprise mode; so will enterprises revert to using passphrases? Or if you use passphrases you already don't have protection from your peers?
Also, TFA talks only abou WPA2. However, there seems to be no reason to think it does not apply to WPA as well. Is anyone sure?
entropy happens
Slashdotters have been complaining about Slashdot for as long as I can remember (since '98).
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Wouldn't it be easier for said malicious insider to just give the man-in-the-middle the PSK?
Anyone else note the gratuitous dig at open source:
So I guess everything would be OK except for those pesky kids and their free software. *sigh*
-- MarkusQ
Shit I thought they were slacking when they let me disable ads!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Holy crap, I am really sentimental now.
I remember the good old days of security world, where BH/CCC/Defcon/etc presentations were technical marvels and work of extremely bright people.
Ah, good old days...
...I'm using WEP, so I am perfectly safe!
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Which is no longer used in current Linux kernels (and won't even compile properly without major tweaks.
And admin level access to the system to perform MAC spoofing. Sure, another user could see your broadcast transmission, but the user credentioals are not used during broadcast.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32(King James Version)
Because in practice, making sure that there is absolutely no hint of a secure piece of information is incredibly tricky. Most programmers traditionally have little concept of actual *secure* programming. Most implementations of perfectly secure algorithms are subject to flaws because people didn't treat side-cases, or properly analyse how the traffic use would affect the algorithm, etc. e.g. not renegotiating keys often enough, so that people can see enough traffic to decrypt a key in a relatively short space of time.
Additionally, this isn't an attack on the crypto. The crypto secures the conversation, it does not necessarily prove identity and if it does prove identity most places don't care about the identity (how many company distinguish individual users/computers over the wireless network by anything other than MAC/IP/username given? AES is still 100% perfectly intact. If you'd been using, say, OpenVPN or OpenSSH with the same algorithm over an unsecured wireless network, the internal encrypted conversation would still be virtually as secure today as it was when AES was invented. The problem is that the *implementation* of AES wasn't designed to cover the usage scenario here, and probably never could be because of the way the access to this particular tiny piece of this part of the broadcast specification is granted. Basically, the flaw has always been sitting there in WPA, not in AES which is still chugging along nicely doing its job. Shocking that a wireless "encryption" fails to properly implement a security scheme because of a bad implementation that side-steps the actual encryption itself... that's never ever happened before ever anywhere :-P
Moral of the story: only trust crypto from those well-established in the crypto-field that's been attacked and attacked and still is approved for government/military use in lots of sensible countries. And then make sure you have a damn good implementation that's not overly complex, or cast in stone, such that most people can't examine it / play with it / fix it.
If you'd been running OpenVPN over the same wireless network, but using OpenVPN's key infrastructure and encryption instead of WPA or WEP or anything at all (i.e. completely "open" wireless) you would still be secure. A bad implementation of a particular encryption in WPA allows people to bypass steps of the actual encryption process that were never designed to be bypassed. It's almost an "out of band" security vulnerability - i.e. nothing to do with whether you use AES or Blowfish or 3DES or whatever you choose... they basically find a way around the (still theoretically secure) encryption that has no effect on the efficacy of the encryption itself.
Basic rule: Just because your "Ethernet-over-the-mains" devices says it uses AES, don't think that means it's "secure". Chances are that it's not.
Indeed - we have a Draytek 2820 broadband wireless router at HQ and it can be setup with up to four SSIDs that can be individually rate limited and isolated from each other (if wanted), giving guest users only broadband access but no corporate LAN connectivity.
AT&ROFLMAO
Connect to an open access point. Establish a VPN connection to the router. Configure the router to only route traffic from VPNed clients. What is the problem? Why can VPN be secure but they cannot seem to manage to build a wireless security system?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
You do understand that one man's "troll" is another man's refusal to tolerate incompetence and sloppiness? I suggest you look up the definition of "troll," Coward.