Cracking WEP keys in less than 60 seconds using aircrack-ptw
JDMurray
Admin Posts: 13,090 Admin
If you haven't yet upgraded your wireless equipment from WEP to WPA or WPA2, here's a really good reason to do it--TODAY!
Cryptographic researchers at the Cryptography and Computer Algebra Group at the Technical University Darmstadt in Germany have created and released an improved version of the aircrack-ng WEP-cracking tool, called aircrack-ptw. This tool is capable of successfully cracking a 104-bit WEP key in under a minute or two depending upon the complexity of the key and the number of packets captured.
According to this article, with as few at 40,000 packets there is a 50% probability of cracking any WEP key in under one minute. With 85,000 packets, the probability of a successful crack jumps to 95% in under two minutes. Obviously, busy WLANs with many users are more vulnerable than the typical home wireless network, but regardless if the WEP key is discovered in a minute or an hour the security of the WLAN will be compromised.
The article recommends that instead of WEP, all WLANs should be switched to using WPA-TKIP or WPA2-CCMP for security. Note: one important limitation of the aircrack-ptw tool is that it currently only works with ARP request and ARP response packets.
WEP key wireless cracking made easy article in The Register
Breaking 104 bit WEP in less than 60 seconds (scientific paper)
Cryptographic researchers at the Cryptography and Computer Algebra Group at the Technical University Darmstadt in Germany have created and released an improved version of the aircrack-ng WEP-cracking tool, called aircrack-ptw. This tool is capable of successfully cracking a 104-bit WEP key in under a minute or two depending upon the complexity of the key and the number of packets captured.
According to this article, with as few at 40,000 packets there is a 50% probability of cracking any WEP key in under one minute. With 85,000 packets, the probability of a successful crack jumps to 95% in under two minutes. Obviously, busy WLANs with many users are more vulnerable than the typical home wireless network, but regardless if the WEP key is discovered in a minute or an hour the security of the WLAN will be compromised.
The article recommends that instead of WEP, all WLANs should be switched to using WPA-TKIP or WPA2-CCMP for security. Note: one important limitation of the aircrack-ptw tool is that it currently only works with ARP request and ARP response packets.
WEP key wireless cracking made easy article in The Register
Breaking 104 bit WEP in less than 60 seconds (scientific paper)
Comments
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drakhan2002
Member Posts: 111
I read that same article on the ComputerWorld web site:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9015559&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8
Anyone not using WPA/WPA-2 should be very concerned. If you don't upgrade/change your configuration after reading this, then you deserved to be hacked. You've been warned!It's not the moments of pleasure, it's the hours of pursuit... -
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