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Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

krackattacks.com

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Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#6
Is there a way I can install an open source phone OS on my old Android phones to keep them patched? I'm not prepared to keep buying new phones just because manufacturers only provide intermittent updates for a year or two.

Anyone got any suggestions for options?

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#8
post #4
post #3

Do we now need WPA3? No, luckily implementations can be patched in a backwards-compatible manner.

The problem is that tons and tons of devices will not receive update until they die.

Don't you only need to patch one end of the communication? Eg if phones are patched, they're safe, even if the AP is not. Then again, I didn't read the attack fully, this might be a client-only problem.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#9
It seems that OpenBSD already patched their source code and that wasn't to the likings of the researcher. In the future he will now delay notifying OpenBSD of vulnerabilities.

Why did OpenBSD silently release a patch before the embargo?

OpenBSD was notified of the vulnerability on 15 July 2017, before CERT/CC was involved in the coordination. Quite quickly, Theo de Raadt replied and critiqued the tentative disclosure deadline: "In the open source world, if a person writes a diff and has to sit on it for a month, that is very discouraging". Note that I wrote and included a suggested diff for OpenBSD already, and that at the time the tentative disclosure deadline was around the end of August. As a compromise, I allowed them to silently patch the vulnerability. In hindsight this was a bad decision, since others might rediscover the vulnerability by inspecting their silent patch. To avoid this problem in the future, OpenBSD will now receive vulnerability notifications closer to the end of an embargo.

Re: Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse

#10
"Our attack is especially catastrophic against version 2.4 and above of wpa_supplicant, a Wi-Fi client commonly used on Linux. Here, the client will install an all-zero encryption key instead of reinstalling the real key. This vulnerability appears to be caused by a remark in the Wi-Fi standard that suggests to clear the encryption key from memory once it has been installed for the first time."

"Because Android uses wpa_supplicant, Android 6.0 and above also contains this vulnerability. This makes it trivial to intercept and manipulate traffic sent by these Linux and Android devices. Note that currently 41% of Android devices are vulnerable to this exceptionally devastating variant of our attack."

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