Hacking WiFi Password in a few steps using a new attack on WPA/WPA2 [source: securityaffairs]

08 Aug 2018

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A security researcher has devised a new WiFi hacking technique that could be exploited to easily crack WiFi passwords of most modern routers.

The security researcher Jens ‘Atom’ Steube, lead developer of the popular password-cracking tool Hashcat, has devised a new WiFi hacking technique that could be exploited to easily crack WiFi passwords of most modern routers.

The new WiFi hacking technique allows to crack WPA/WPA2 wireless network protocols with Pairwise Master Key Identifier (PMKID)-based roaming features enabled.

The expert was analyzing the recently launched WPA3 security standard when accidentally the new technique.

“This attack was discovered accidentally while looking for new ways to attack the new WPA3 security standard. WPA3 will be much harder to attack because of its modern key establishment protocol called “Simultaneous Authentication of Equals” (SAE).” Steube wrote in a post.

“The main difference from existing attacks is that in this attack, capture of a full EAPOL 4-way handshake is not required. The new attack is performed on the RSN IE (Robust Security Network Information Element) of a single EAPOL frame.”

Older attack techniques required capturing a full 4-way handshake of Extensible Authentication Protocol over LAN (EAPOL), that is a network port authentication protocol. The new attack technique, differently from the previous ones, targets the Robust Secure Network Information Element (RSN IE).

The RSN protocol was designed for establishing secure communications over an 802.11 wireless network and it is part of the 802.11i (WPA) standard. Every time it attempts to establish a secure communication channel, the RSN broadcasts an RSN IE message within the network.

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