WEP Security Alert

[oast]

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

[DJilla]

Originally Posted by oast

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 .