Wireless LAN security (fwd)

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

     We implemented an attack against WEP, the link-layer
     security protocol for 802.11 networks.  The attack was
     described in a recent paper by Fluhrer, Mantin, and
     Shamir.  With our implementation, and permission of the
     network administrator, we were able to recover the 128
     bit secret key used in a production network, with a
     passive attack.  The WEP standard uses RC4 IVs
     improperly, and the attack exploits this design
     failure.  This paper describes the attack, how we
     implemented it, and some optimizations to make the
     attack more efficient.  We conclude that 802.11 WEP is
     totally insecure, and we provide some recommendations.
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~astubble/wep/wep_attack.html

They also mentioned,
"Surprisingly, capturing WEP encrypted packets off of our wireless
network proved to be the most difficult part of the attack."


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