Wireless “In”Security

By Jeremy Burris

This article highlights some of the ways that an attacker can circumvent your wireless security features and attempt to breach your network.

Encryption
There are two affordable and common types of encryption on the market today for wireless devices: WEP (Wireless Equivalent Privacy) and WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access). Both wireless technologies have the ability to encrypt data up to a 128-bit cipher, but not all devices use this “strong” encryption level by default. In both cases (although taking approximately twice as long when using WPA encryption), an attacker can “sniff” and collect enough packets of a certain type (called “Weak IVs”) from your wireless network to begin “cracking” your WEP or WPA encryption code. This is done through packet reinjection techniques, which can help an attacker generate large amounts of wireless traffic on your network, thus increasing the amount of Weak IV packets that are being sent. These need to be collected in large quantities in order to “crack” the code.

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