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MIT Researchers Defend Against Wireless Attacks

Posted by timothy on from the just-kill-anyone-in-any-sort-of-middle dept.

alphadogg writes "MIT researchers have devised a protocol to flummox man-in-the-middle attacks against wireless networks. The all-software solution lets wireless radios automatically pair without the use of passwords and without relying on out-of-band techniques such as infrared or video channels. Dubbed Tamper-evident pairing, or TEP, the technique is based on understanding how man-in-the-middle attacks tamper with wireless messages, and then detects and in some cases blocks the tampering. The researchers suggest that TEP could have detected the reported but still unconfirmed cellular man-in-the-middle attack that unfolded at the Defcon conference earlier this month in Las Vegas."

3 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Very poor summary by Mensa+Babe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I happen to have been following the work of Dina Katabi et al. for quite some time now and I have to admit that it is a very poor summary even for Slashdot. I can assure you that you can understand much more by skipping the summary, skipping the Original Source link and just reading the paper in question. It is a truly revolutionary idea that will soon change the way we perceive the risks in wireless communication.

    --
    Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
  2. Re:Tamper Evident by sexconker · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you RTFA you'd know their scheme works like this:
    Client says "Hey, let's connect and be secure.".
    Router says "Hey, let's connect and be secure using this key.".
    Router yells "BEEP .... BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP .... BEEP BEEP!".
    Client says "That pointless noise lined up exactly with the 1s in the message about the key. And the little pauses of silence lined up with the 0s. I should trust it.".

    This does nothing.

    A MITM will be able to construct his own lie message about using his key instead, as well as be able to construct his own noise pattern.
    All a client can see is "Hey, there are TWO packets telling me which keys to use!".

    Exactly the same as current implementations that don't rely on pre-shared keys or out-of-band authentication.

  3. you miss the point by Chirs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The client sees the "lie", and doesn't trust either of the offers because it isn't sure which is real.

    Based on this, it's possible to DOS a router by sending out connection offers, but you can't do a MITM attack.