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Attack Tool Released For WPS Setup Flaw

Trailrunner7 writes "Just a day after security researcher Stefan Viehbock released details of a vulnerability in the WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) standard that enables attackers to recover the router PIN, a security firm has published an open-source tool capable of exploiting the vulnerability. The tool, known as Reaver, has the ability to find the WPS PIN on a given router and then recover the WPA passphrase for the router, as well. Tactical Network Solutions has released the tool as an open-source project on Google Code, but also is selling a more advanced commercial version."

14 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. WTF is WPS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh, I see. It's a tool for retards.

    Seriously, if you can't admin your router and at least setup a WPA2 protected network without resorting to some sort of giant "easy button", then you have absolutely no right to complain when someone breaks into your network and does whatever it is script kiddies do these days.

    This dumbing down of consumer electronics needs to stop. Dilbert said something to the effect of "If you idiot proof something, someone invents a better idiot" (Scott Adams may not have come up with that quote, but that's where I first read it). Therefore, by trying to produce equipment that targets the stupidest of the stupid, we're only dooming everyone to greater depths of stupidity.

    It will not end until we literally take a stand against stupidity- draw a line in the sand, and say "If you can't comprehend this stuff, you don't deserve to use it". This "black box" user thing has gone too far. Especially when I read about retarded things like WPS that serve no useful purpose then to let idiots use gear that they would not normally be able to- either because the manufacture fucked up the design and turned it into some obfuscated piece of crap, or because the user simply has no desire to understand things that must surely seem magical to them.

    -AC

    1. Re:WTF is WPS? by errandum · · Score: 5, Informative

      The problem is not the need for the giant button, it's that it is on by default in some routers.

      I own a D-Link and I did set up everything by hand, but since I didn't want to use this, I simply didn't touch the option - assuming that, by default, this would be off.

      I was wrong, and corrected that, but I wonder how many of those people that use the setup wizard know enough to even get to the advanced features, much less turning this off because it is a security risk.

    2. Re:WTF is WPS? by gnasher719 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, I see. It's a tool for retards.

      A quote from Billy Joel, after being ripped off by his manager (and I think he is one of few people who successfully sued their lawyer): "I know many excellent businessmen who can't sing."

      Just because you find it entertaining to know who to admin a router and set up a protected network, most people have a lot better things to do in their lives. Someone who wants a giant "easy button" isn't a retard, but someone who has better things to do in their life.

      And guess what, it isn't the people you call "retards" who messed it up. It's the real retards who designed a system where an eight digit PIN number can be cracked in at most 11,000 tries.

    3. Re:WTF is WPS? by Penguinshit · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That is the crux of the problem: The solution was (pathetically) poorly implemented.

    4. Re:WTF is WPS? by jamesh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It will not end until we literally take a stand against stupidity- draw a line in the sand, and say "If you can't comprehend this stuff, you don't deserve to use it"

      I see this attitude more and more. I wonder if people had to put up with the same elitist bullshit after the car become affordable to masses... or even the printed book. You might know how to use a computer but I wonder if you'd know how a transistor works and how to build one, or what an IRQL is, or a DPC. And even if you do, there will be someone else that knows more than you who will look down their nose at you and tell you you have no right to use a computer without understanding how it works.

      WPS isn't that bad an idea really... it just turns out it has a bug, and unfortunately that bug is going to be unfixable in a lot of cases (end-of-life model AP with no firmware update available)... hopefully those AP's at least have a way to turn it off. If you are pointing the finger of blame at anyone, point it at the people who implemented it - they're the ones who screwed up.

      If i'm feeding the trolls... i might as well give them a good meal.

    5. Re:WTF is WPS? by h00manist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      much less turning this off because it is a security risk.

      ...but it's a security *feature*! See it's called "wifi protected setup". No way I'm disabling that, and then what, my wifi setup won't be protected? Are you kidding me? These hacker guys are trying to fool you into turning it off!

      --
      Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
    6. Re:WTF is WPS? by neokushan · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's on by default because it's there for the average user to easily connect their equipment. If it was off by default, it would require connecting (either via password or cable) and enabling it manually via the setup page - and by that point, you'd just connect the usual way.
      In a similar vein, it'd be like UAC being disabled by default - average user won't turn it on, even if it does help them.

      --
      +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    7. Re:WTF is WPS? by kbolino · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've been using and administering Windows since the 3.0 days, and not only do I leave UAC on, but I turn it up to the highest level (7 has variable levels, where the highest level corresponds to the only one available on Vista). I agree it can be a nuisance, and 95% of the time I just click through it (knowing what I did beforehand to trigger it). But every once in a while, it pops up when I know it shouldn't, and that tells me right away that something is doing something it's not supposed to be doing. Not only that, but I can decline to allow it to continue, which to me is UAC's most useful property: the ability to say no. Then it's much easier to locate the problem and remove it. I practice safe browsing and safe e-mail reading as much as possible, and I have a router with a drop-all-unknown-packets (ghost? stealth?) firewall, but I know that I'm not perfect--and neither are the other people who use the computers. YMMV but I've found it to be one of the best improvements over Windows XP.

    8. Re:WTF is WPS? by gnasher719 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Erm, 8 digit PIN is fine. Routers can limit PIN guesses y'know...

      You didn't read the article, did you? The routers tell you that the pin is wrong after four digits. So you need 10,000 tries at most to get the first four digits. The last digit is a checksum, so you need at most another 1000 tries to get the complete number.

      Of all the routers tested, only _one_ model limited PIN guesses (you can't turn PIN guesses off obviously because that would just enable a DOS attack) to about one guess every 20 seconds, which means it is cracked within a few days.

    9. Re:WTF is WPS? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Funny

      HA you should have bought a Linksys. I turned on WPS, I typed in my router PIN and I even pushed the button and my devices are still unable to connect.

      Secure by design?

  2. Re:What purpose? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe it's handy for verifying you are vulnerable?

    Although I'd have to admit anyone actually using WPS probably isn't interested enough to even know such a tool exists...

    Well, since the claim is most routers are vulnerable by default, I can see value in using this as a test tool - both against your router's current configuration and after you've supposedly disabled WPS.

    And, speaking as an owner of an Apple router, I'd like to verify whether my belief that the Airport Extreme doesn't enable a PIN by default is correct.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  3. Re:What purpose? by jamesh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, what non-malicious purpose would this tool have? Anybody who read about the vulnerability knows how it works; there is no need to have a sample attack because it is obvious how this works; having an exploit tool cannot have any legitimate uses.

    Sure it does. If a customer questions why this should be audited and fixed on their network immediately I can tell them that there is exploit code publicly available that anyone can download and use and have access to the network in 4-10 hours instead of talking about theoretical bad guys who might have obtained a theoretical exploit from somewhere. It makes it a "fix this now" problem with a known risk instead of being put off and treated as a low risk security issue and never fixed. In my case hopefully it's just a quick audit to make sure nobody else has put a WPS enabled AP onto the network, but it still needs to be done.

    Maybe you don't remember Slammer/Nimda/Code Red, and a few others of that era. The exploits used were well known and patches were available for a while beforehand but a lot of people never bothered patching because of the perceived low risk and "doesn't apply to me". Ditto for a few Linux ssh and ftp exploits.

  4. Re:Doesn't compile on OS X by buchanmilne · · Score: 4, Informative

    yum install libpcap-devel

    No, it's not on the RHEL6 installation media, you have to have registered the box for RHN.

    (RH is really pathetic this way, lots of useful packages are left off the installation media, seems they are forcing you towards satellite, but if you don't have the bandwidth for satellite, or need to setup a box without internet access, sorry for you if you want to something like use oscap - they give you openscap, but not openscap-utils). Oracle is better in this regard, with a public yum repo for release packages (not updates). Of course, CentOS gives you everything, as do all other community-oriented distros.

  5. Re:incredible by Njovich · · Score: 4, Informative

    Err, sorry, guess I was wrong, there is some rate limiting, just they have this other insanity (from el reg):
     

    Eight digits should produce 100,000,000 possible combinations, and testing various routers Viehböck found it took an average of around two seconds to test each combination. So brute forcing should take several years unless the router was particularly responsive.

    But the protocol used by Wi-Fi Protected Setup reports back after the first four digits have been entered, and indicates if they are right, which means they can be attacked separately. The last of the eight digits is just a checksum, so having got the first four the attacker only then has to try another 1,000 combinations (identifying the other three digits) and the entire PIN is known.

    That combination means that our attacker only has to try 11,000 different combinations to find the right PIN, reducing the attack time to a couple of hours.