Your Wi-Fi’s WPA2 Encryption Can Be Cracked Offline: Here’s How
When it comes to securing your Wi-Fi network, we always recommend WPA2-PSK encryption. It’s the only really effective way to restrict access to your home Wi-Fi network. But WPA2 encryption can be cracked, too — here’s how.
As usual, this isn’t a guide to cracking someone’s WPA2 encryption. It’s an explanation of how your encryption could be cracked and what you can do to better protect yourself.
There are two types of ways to potentially crack a password, generally referred to as offline and online. In an offline attack, an attacker has a file with data they can attempt to crack. For example, if an attacker managed to access and download a password database full of hashed passwords, they could then attempt to crack those passwords. They can guess millions of times per second, and they’re only really limited by how fast their computing hardware is. Clearly, with access to a password database offline, an attacker can attempt to crack a password much more easily. They do this via “brute-forcing” — literally attempting to guess many different possibilities and hoping one will match.
