WEP destroyed by new client hack
It was cracked long ago, but hacks for the discredited WEP wireless security protocol still keep coming. The latest one to be uncovered is the work of AirTight Networks’ researchers Vivek Ramachandran and MD Sohail Ahmad, and was demonstrated at last weekend’s Toorcon9 conference.
Aided by flaws in the Windows Wi-Fi stack, the new attack involved coaxing an isolated Windows laptop into sending back ARP packets in response to a barrage of the same from the attacking machine, from which the WEP (wired equivalency protocol) key can be recovered.
Unlike past attacks, which involved sniffing the encryption key used by WEP using traffic to and from the access point (AP), the new attack involves only the laptop client, and can be done even if the laptop is nowhere near an AP.
