“Breaking 104 bit WEP in less than 60 seconds” is the title of a paper by Erik Tews, Andrei Pychkine and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, three cryptographic researchers at the cryptography and computer algebra group at the technical university Darmstadt in Germany.

For those new to wireless LAN security and WEP cracking, WEP’s weaknesses have been known since 2001. In the last six years, various passive and active methods have been released reducing the time it takes to break WEP.

The big deal about his attack is that it is much faster and requires less processing than previous methods. They have released a “proof-of-concept” attack tool called aircrack-ptw.

Another recent paper (2005) titled The Final Nail in WEP’s Coffin was suppose to be the final paper regarding WEP, but obviously wasn’t.

Personally, I think we’ll see a few more… maybe the next one will be titled, WEP: How To Beat A Dead Horse.

Joking aside, I think continued research related to WEP is a good thing. As we learn more about WEP’s weaknesses, it will be easier to educate users on how to secure a wireless network.

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Filed under: WLAN Security