Researchers Crack iOS Mobile Hotspot Passwords In Less Than a Minute

msm1267 writes "Business travelers who tether their iPhones as mobile hotspots beware. Researchers at the University of Erlanger-Nuremberg in Germany have discovered a weakness in the way iOS generates default passwords for such connections that can leave a user's device vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, information leakage or abuse of the user's Internet connection. Andreas Kurtz, Felix Freiling and Daniel Metz published a paper (PDF) that describes the inner workings of how an attacker can exploit the PSK (pre-shared key) authentication iOS uses to establish a secure WPA2 connection when using the Apple smartphone as a hotspot. The researchers said that attackers would find the least resistance attacking the PSK setup rather than trying their hand at beating the operating system's complex programming layers."

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Brief Comparison to other Platforms

[Plumpaquatsch]

Other mobile platforms might be affected by these deficits as well. Although, we did not analyze other platforms in detail, spot-checks have revealed that default passwords in Windows Phone 8 consist of only 8-digit numbers. As this results in a search space of 108 candidates, attacks on Windows-based hotspot passwords might be practicable. Moreover, while the official version of Android generates strong passwords2, some vendors modified the Wi-Fi related components utilized in their devices and weakened the algorithm of generating default passwords. For instance, some Android-based models of the smart- phone and tablet manufacturer HTC are even shipped with constant default passwords consisting of a static string (1234567890) [26]. However, future studies will be necessary to evaluate the security level of mobile hotspots on other platforms in more detail.