[9112] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Cipher attack delivers heavy blow to WLAN security
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Monty Solomon)
Mon Aug 6 07:12:23 2001
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Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 01:18:30 -0400
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From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
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Cipher attack delivers heavy blow to WLAN security
By Patrick Mannion
EE Times
(08/04/01, 12:49 p.m. EST)
MANHASSET, N.Y. - A new report dashes any remaining illusions that
802.11-based (Wi-Fi) wireless local-area networks are in any way
secure. The paper, written by three of the world's foremost
cryptographers, describes a devastating attack on the RC4 cipher, on
which the WLAN wired-equivalent privacy (WEP) encryption scheme is
based.
The passive network attack takes advantage of several weaknesses in
the key-scheduling algorithm of RC4 and allows almost anyone with a
WLAN-enabled laptop and some readily available "promiscuous" network
software to retrieve a network's key - thereby gaining full user
access - in less than 15 minutes.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010803S0082
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