FC: Researchers find flaws in 802.11 wireless security standard

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Tue Aug 07 2001 - 04:26:26 PDT

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    Also see:
    
    Risks of Microsoft Passport
    We all know the risks of trusting DNS and the fact that users click OK when
    presented with certificate warnings in their browser. So what happens when
    you build a single sign-on model for e-commerce that leverages these
    technologies? You end up with some risks that users might not expect.
    Microsoft's ambitious Passport service uses these common Internet
    standards. Avi Rubin and Dave Kormann from AT&T Research Labs document the
    risks of the Passport system in their research report, "Risks of the
    Passport Single Signon Protocol".
    http://avirubin.com/passport.html
    
    ----
    
    Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 07:04:09 -0400
    From: Avi Rubin <rubinat_private>
    Organization: AT&T Labs - Research
    To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    Subject: You may find this interesting - we broke WEP
    
    We have a new paper:
    
    Using the Fluhrer, Mantin, and Shamir Attack to Break WEP
    by
    Adam Stubblefield, John Ioannidis, and Aviel D. Rubin
    
    Abstract
    
    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 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.
    	
    The paper is available at http://www.cs.rice.edu/~astubble/wep/
    
    
    Take care,
    Avi
    
    
    ---------------------------------------
    Avi Rubin, AT&T Labs - Research
    http://avirubin.com/
    
    * New Book * White-Hat Security Arsenal
    http://white-hat.org/
    ---------------------------------------
    
    
    
    
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