[Gllug] WEP security experiences

[Dylan]

Hello List

Well, I was asked recently how secure a friend's network was so I set about 
learning to use kismet and aircrack just to find out ...

I broke his WEP key in 11 seconds - the only thing was, I needed to harvest 
over 2 million packets with varying contents to do so. I set up a network 
with three wireless machines + AP and set off various file transfers up to 
the saturation point (managed to get over 50Mb/s throughput which I thought 
was quite good) and after nearly an hour and a half I had gathered enough 
packets on a separate machine to crack the encryption. I tried several 
times - increasing the amount of bandwidth used and the number of packets 
captured as I went and 2 million seems to be a cut off point for 128bit wep. 
I also found that if there was only one wifi attached device, even 2 million 
packets was not enough to crack the key.

So - is it reasonable to think that your average criminal is going to go to 
that effort - waiting for two million packets to fly thru the ether (bearing 
in mind that I've tried just collecting packets from neighbours (for purely 
research purposes, of course) and can't even get a hundred thousand per hour 
even when I know they are heavy web users.

Thoughts?

comments?

Dylan
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug