One-minute WiFi crack puts further pressure on WPA
In the wake of WEP's failure, WiFi Protected Access (WPA) was supposed to keep our data safe as it blasted through the ether. It still works, but researchers have now crafted several effective attacks; the newest takes only to minute to decode a short packet.
By Nate Anderson | Last updated August 27, 2009 3:02 PM
Researchers have come a step closer to breaking open a common WiFi encryption scheme. An attacker can now read and falsify short packets in the common TKIP version of WiFi Protected Access (WPA) encryption in about one minute—a huge speed increase from the previously-required 12-15 minutes.
The hack is not a complete break; it only results in the ability to read and falsify particular short data packets, but cannot retrieve a WPA encryption key. Still, the rapid development of WPA hacks suggests that those paranoid about security ensure that their WiFi networks are using WPA2 with AES encryption rather than WPA with TKIP.
