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Breaking News - Key Reinstallation Attacks (KRACK)
Posted by Geoff - SSBG on 17 October 2017 12:52 PM |
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 WPA2 protocol used by vast majority of wifi connections has been broken by Belgian researchers, highlighting potential for internet traffic to be exposed. The security protocol used to protect the vast majority of wifi connections has been broken, potentially exposing wireless internet traffic to malicious eavesdroppers and attacks, according to the researcher who discovered the weakness. Mathy Vanhoef, a security expert at Belgian university KU Leuven, discovered the weakness in the wireless security protocol WPA2, and published details of the flaw on Monday morning. “Attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted,” Vanhoef’s report said. “This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos and so on. Vanhoef emphasised that “the attack works against all modern protected wifi networks. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites.” The vulnerability affects a number of operating systems and devices, the report said, including Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys and others. “If your device supports wifi, it is most likely affected,” Vanhoef wrote. “In general, any data or information that the victim transmits can be decrypted … Additionally, depending on the device being used and the network setup, it is also possible to decrypt data sent towards the victim (e.g. the content of a website).” Vanhoef gave the weakness the codename Krack, short for Key Reinstallation AttaCK. Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre said in a statement it was examining the vulnerability. “Research has been published today into potential global weaknesses to wifi systems. The attacker would have to be physically close to the target and the potential weaknesses would not compromise connections to secure websites, such as banking services or online shopping. There’s likely to be a delay before the vulnerability is used to actually attack networks in the wild, says Symantec researcher Candid Wuest. “It’s quite a complex attack to carry out in practice, but we’ve seen similar before, so we know it’s possible to automate. “Small businesses and people at home should be concerned, but not too worried,” Wuest added, advising most users to simply apply the updates to their software as and when it becomes available. Different devices and operating systems are impacted to differing degrees based on how they implement the WPA2 protocol. Among the worst hit are Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and Linux, due to a further bug that results in the encryption key being rewritten to all-zeros; iOS and Windows, meanwhile, are among the most secure, since they don’t fully implement the WPA2 protocol. No tested device or piece of software was fully immune to the weakness, however. See Full Article here | |
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