Some WLANs open to dictionary attack
A dictionary attack designed to crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access security for wireless LANs has been published by a researcher at ICSA Labs.
The attack exploits one option that can be used in WPA, usually in consumer applications or residential WLANs: a pre-shared encryption key. This key is simpler to use and deploy than using the more complex 802.1x for authentication. With the pre-shared key, a common shared pass phrase is set for users and the WLAN access point. This phrase and the Service Set Identifier (SSID) (the network name) of the WLAN access point then are changed via an algorithm into an encryption key used to scramble the packets between clients and the access point.
