"640K is more memory than anyone will ever need." | ||
| --Bill Gates, Founder, Microsoft | ||
Even with the best of intentions, the future is always unpredictable. The WLAN committee designed WEP and then WPA to be foolproof encryption mechanisms but, over time, both these mechanisms had flaws that have been widely publicized and exploited in the real world.
WLAN encryption mechanisms have had a long history of being vulnerable to cryptographic attacks. It started with WEP in early 2000, which eventually was completely broken. In recent times, attacks are slowly targeting WPA. Even though there is no public attack available currently to break WPA in all general conditions, there are attacks that are feasible under special circumstances.
In this chapter, we will take a look at the following topics:
- Different encryption schemas in WLANs
- Cracking WEP encryption
- Cracking WPA encryption
WLANs transmit data over the air and thus there is an inherent need to protect data confidentiality. This is best done using encryption. The WLAN committee (IEEE 802.11) formulated the following protocols for data encryption:
In this chapter, we will take a look at each of these encryption protocols and demonstrate various attacks against them.