WEP Security Alert
 

Ya, I've been away working on a consulting project that's been consuming me (unfortunately not computer related) but saw this a few hours ago and thought I'd drop a heads up. Been thinking bout you all!

http://www.primary0.com/2005/06/04/w...g-the-fbi-way/

Ciao!

That's why a few months ago I decided to not use wireless in my home.

The FBI must have hired a few UNIX guys... :)

That is not new news I checked my general area ages ago with that technique (unsurprisingly found lots of totally unsecured wireless) and surely you've heard of wardriving.

btw BackTrack is a better distro if you are interested.

A lot of this article is 'scaremongery' (IMO) aimed at the ones who the FBI are looking at. The 'average' (non-paranoid) man should have nothing to worry about.

There are plenty of unsecured wireless networks around. I often turn on the WiFi on my PDA when I'm out and about waiting for the wife to choose her dress/shoes/skirt/blouse and am amazed at the number of networks I can see and get connected to.

I use WEP for my son's Nintendo DS, my wife's laptop, and my PDA. I use a 64BIT key, because I know that no-one in my area would bother (or even know how) to hack me.

Do you mean non-paranoid or the "Uneducated Man"?

Do you do any online banking? Put your credit card on the Internet? Use PayPal or ePassport?

Anyone can drive into a neighborhood and park for a bit while sniffing traffic. The software just sits and scans for things that look like authentication tokens and account numbers.

While everyone knows that this same information can be gotten by breaking into a home, going through trash and other physical means, this is the first time in history that so much personal information is in the air. People that would never consider committing crimes that require physical contact with people, paper or other things do this all the time.

Recently a web site was shut down where some kids posted the personal information of 10,000s government employees including SSN, cc information and various personal login information.

I used to plug my sniffer in outside of my firewall and on my cable. I could sniff everything going on in the neighborhood. I've heard so many people say "I have a firewall" but what does that do once your information is in the air?

Just because you're uneducated about a subject does that mean that those of us that are educated are paranoid?

I am not uneducated.. you don't know me, so don't assume, please. Thank you.

The wrong education can lead to paranoia. In a lot of cases it is the cause.

The FBI demonstration (conducted over a year ago, BTW) used exagerted traffic loads to break the code in 3 minutes. Traffic FAR beyond the norm of a household or even small business. The amount of "normal" data that needs to be 'sniffed' to get access to a network would take hours (maybe days on a slower-moving, average, home network).

Would you sit outside a house for hours (or days) in the hope that the network was hackable? Then... assuming it was... that they had some information worth stealing? I don't think so.

Why the sudden panic? Unless your home/office is one enormous Faraday cage your computer is as secure as a leaky bucket. Back in the early 80's I worked in a computer shop. We used to fill in the boring bits between customers by picking up the spillage from the display computers using an ordinary TV aerial. Think what you could do with serious equipment. And that was NOT wireless, it was simply catching the RF (?) leakage from the cables.

I used the appropriate word in my 1st reply... "scaremongery"

The FBI (or similar) might have been bored one day, so thought they would bring up some history to get people worried about something.

OR

They are up to something else and want to divert attention away.

I don't know enough about the US or the FBI to comment any further :)

Not true as it kind of says in the article. The sole purpose of Aireplay is to flood the network with 1000's of packets so that Airodump can capture what it needs. What may have taken days or weeks can be done easy in minutes (normally under an hour).

WPA is crackable the same way it just takes longer. If you want security go with 802.11x or wire :)

I would say it's not often the case the someone wants to hack you to find your little secrets (personal or business), it's more like they are looking for free internet or a means to use you connection as a relay for other dastardly deeds.

For the average home, I agree with Oast. I'm far from concerned about my neighbors cracking their way in. And as far as pros driving around seeking out signals, I can walk my laptop out to my sidewalk and lose signal, so I'm not worried. If I lived in an apartment building with a bunch of strangers, I'd probably be more concerned.

I use WPA-PSK, not WEP, on an 802.g network if anyone wants to pull a drive-by. My house is the one with the with rusted tin porch roof. ;)

Why would you even ask such an amazingly stupid question? I have a job, a family, friends and much better things to do. Silly Brits crack me up :)

Educated hackers narrow the times of attacks depending on what they want. Most home banking is done between the hours of 6:30 and 8:00PM on the east coast and towards the end of the month. Most office work that's done from homes occurs after 9:00PM.

Ah the on going question. Do you worry or not. Me, I don't give two shits anymore. I dont pay online for anything and when I do it's late night. So if I see a car sitting outside with a laptop lighting the inside I could honestly careless. I look at it like this. I hope someone takes my fucking card, then I can call the company and tell them the washer I bought last month was not my purchase. The only secure computer is the one not online.

A teen hacker running the right brute-force software on his hijacked network of 10,000+ unfirewalled PCs could probably accomplish the task fairly quickly.

Ever looked at raw weblogs of a hacker attack? One hacker running a brute force password attempt on one of my (now-defunct) paysites was sending around 1,000 hits per minute, nonstop for around 36 hours, from several thousand different IPs worldwide. You don't need to be parked outside with a single laptop - you just need the target IP address and a network of compromised machines aimed at it.

Thanks for your input, lassiter.
Using your example to break into a WiFi network:

With 20 digit alphanumeric WPA protection; a brute force attack would take approximately 1000 years on a laptop from a car parked outside your house (thats a rough calculation, BTW)!

I can think of much better things to do in that time! Maybe it's just that us Brits have more common sense than some DC'ers

I'm still amazed at the lack of concern that people take for their wireless networks which is the reason that I posted in the first place. WEP was always weak but I was shocked to see that it had been busted in less than three minutes. A quick further search showed that this post has made all the rounds in the various hacker boards so its well known. I don't have time anymore to fool with linux but I asked a kid friend hacker of mine and he was like " oh yeah, works perfectly". A couple of reminders are in order:

1) If you live in a moderate or large metro area, I guarantee that there are bands of kids wardriving and sharing the info just because this is what they do for fun.

2) Most new wireless users are happy to just get the thing working and leave security in default which is WEP. A lot of others do too because they're lazy.

3) When electronic eavesdropping becomes too easy, it adds a multiple of people who think it too easy not to ignore.

I really posted because so many people don't take it seriously and need to be reminded. Hell, in a personally competitive situation I've paid $500 a week just for a company's garbage, and wireless access is the same only better, you collect everything becasue you just never know what might be useful! If you've got issues or a super competitive situation with someone else, you've got to worry about huge leaks like this. I think the issue is like viruses, you have to prepare and assume that someday, one is going to get you. When the argument was that it would take many, many hours, if not days to crack a WPA key then this greatly lessens the liklihood of it happening. When it takes only a half hour, is this more tempting to more people to try out? Sure it is. If only one or two people think that maybe they should take a second look at that big WPA key then such scaremongering is probably justified. I'm also hearing that WEP is being chipped at too on a distributed processing basis (see comment about hacked PC's being used to work the problem) but nothing like a few minutes. Besides I hadn't posted in awhile and thought it worthy :).