Wi-Fi Networking News: WPA Cracking Proof of Concept Available
We warned you: short WPA passphrases could be cracke — and now the software exists: The folks who wrote tinyPEAP, a firmware replacement for two Linksys router models that has on-board RADIUS authentication using 802.1X plus PEAP, released a WPA cracking tool.
As Robert Moskowitz noted on this site a year ago, a weakness in shorter and dictionary-word-based passphrases used with Wi-Fi Protected Access render those passphrases capable of being cracked. The WPA Cracker tool is somewhat primitive, requiring that you enter the appropriate data retrieved via a packet sniffer like Ethereal. Once entered, it runs the cracking algorithms.
found by GT
Um……WELL…….As an avid wardriver, my friends and I have been aware of brute force password crackers for WPA and WPA2 for some time now. Any password under ten characters, no matter how good, is not safe from a person with time to run a cracker (a neighbor.) And anything from the dictionary or a common name can be broken in a few hours. A twenty character string of random gibberish would be reasonably safe, and if changed often would be very secure. Also a good idea to get a router (or firmware update) that will only allow limited numbers of access attempts in a single hour. If you only allow 1000 attempts an hour you will never know the difference, but the cracker will be seriously delayed.