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| Every Wi-Fi network at risk of unprecedented 'Krack' hacking attack | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 16 2017, 09:56 AM (442 Views) | |
| clone | Oct 16 2017, 09:56 AM Post #1 |
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Director @ Center for Advanced Memetic Warfare
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Every Wi-Fi network at risk of unprecedented 'Krack' hacking attack LINK |
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Only liberals can choose not to go down the road to widespread, systematic violence. | |
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| Demagogue | Oct 16 2017, 12:13 PM Post #2 |
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There is actually a simple "fix" for this that will thwart 99% of the people who would try this attack. Simply don't broadcast your SSID. The default on every home grade wireless router I have seen is to broadcast the SSID. That is the "name" of your router and if you don't broadcast it, the vast majority of folks (99%) will not know it is there. If you want to be 100% secure then you have to be a little more technically competent and use what is often referred to as "Access Control". This is where you limit access to your router to specific MAC addresses. If you combine non-visible SSID and access control then for all intents and purposes your WIFI will be locked down from pretty much anyone other than the NSA sitting in a van outside your house and even they would probably need to break into your house to get to a computer that is physically connected in order to hack it. Odds are, if they wanted in they would just use one of the backdoors built into the windows OS for them and get at you from some remote location, not your wifi. Edited by Demagogue, Oct 16 2017, 12:14 PM.
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| People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would do them harm. | |
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| Robertr2000 | Oct 18 2017, 12:54 PM Post #3 |
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"There is actually a simple "fix" for this that will thwart 99% of the people who would try this attack. Simply don't broadcast your SSID." Completely wrong. A novice hacker can and does look for non-broadcast SSiD's. hacking 101. (disclosure: I am a WLAN Engineer 12 years coming from a security background from SBC and AT&T. I have both Cisco CCNP-Wireless and Aruba ACMP certifications.) Edited by Robertr2000, Oct 18 2017, 12:55 PM.
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| "if that **** wins we'll all hang from nooses" | |
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| Demagogue | Oct 18 2017, 02:47 PM Post #4 |
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Ok, 99.9% is an exaggeration. You can get the hidden SSID by reading packet information of a client that is connecting to the router. Yes you can spoof an approved mac address. The question is can you get the hidden SSID, spoof the mac address, AND bypass the WPA security without taking a rather lengthy amount of time within range of the wifi device. I suppose in the case of an apartment building you might be able to be in a surrounding apartment and have plenty of time to do this but for a network in a home on property you are going to have to be parked in someone's driveway while you do this. That is going to get noticed. Hence my exaggeration on how secure it would be. Generally speaking, all locks simply keep honest people honest. Professional criminals can bypass any lock and the government can do so even faster than professional criminals. For your average homeowner with wifi, the combination of WPA2/WPA, hidden SSID, and mac address whitelisting will prevent all but the most dedicated criminals from getting in and for those folks to even try, you kind of have be a special case don't you? As a WLAN engineer, how long would it take you to hack into a router with a hidden SSID, mac address filtering, and a proper WPA2 encryption while using the hack outlined in this article? I have the equipment needed to do this but it is not what I do daily. It would take me some time. More than 5 minutes, probably less than an hour. My understanding of his vulnerability is that it goes after devices connecting to a network not the router itself unless the router is in bridge mode. Microsoft already released an update that addressed this hack. Android and Apple are in the process of getting a patch out. I suppose the advice to folks would be make sure Windows update is enabled and then do anything important on a PC until Apple and Android get their act together. Regardless though, you should still use the basic security measures that I pointed out because it will keep your average drive by hacker from seeing you. Nobody is going to stop a professional thief or competent hacker who specifically targets you and has unfettered access to being within 100 feet of your home. Edited by Demagogue, Oct 18 2017, 03:09 PM.
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| People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would do them harm. | |
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| Robertr2000 | Oct 19 2017, 10:45 AM Post #5 |
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This WPA2 exploit is kind of being blown out of proportion. Your average home owner has no more to worry about than they did the day or month or year ago. My point here is that anyone who has the know how to hack a Secured WLAN is not going to be slowed down not one second by a hidden SSiD. It's irrelevant. It's like trying to stop a peeping tom by closing your window. Zero effect. I scan Wi-Fi networks all the time. All the time. It's one of things I get paid to do. There isn't a major corporation in the world that doesn't already have hidden SSiD's. Hidden or Broadcasted doesn't matter. There is zero extra effort to do so. And I'm not even a "hacker". |
| "if that **** wins we'll all hang from nooses" | |
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| Demagogue | Oct 19 2017, 10:57 AM Post #6 |
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I was not really talking about corporate folks with my suggestion. They have a much larger footprint and many have public access points. Here is an interesting question for you. I have never explored this because I don't have one of their modems but every comcast modem that includes a wifi router has a secondary wifi that is used by comcast rather than the customer. This is what created their network of Xfinity wifi hot spots. Now the customer has the ability to disable this feature but it requires you to be willing to dig into the options. When they first deployed these Comcast swore up and down that there was no way to get from their public network onto the private network of a homeowner or business owner. I think they may be full of crap with that statement. What do you think? Have you ever seen any of their hardware. If you do corporate level stuff I realize that you won't see these modems in your job very often if ever. Edited by Demagogue, Oct 19 2017, 10:58 AM.
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| People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would do them harm. | |
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| Robertr2000 | Oct 19 2017, 01:23 PM Post #7 |
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As an AT&T customer, I myself have gone in and disabled the default SSiD(s) and created my own with new passwords, also drop the radio power to 12-15mw. Mine was default set to 100mw, way too powerful for home use. This is a recommendation that I make to people anyway. End users can either do it themselves if they have the know how but it is easy to lock yourself out of the router and of your wifi. So be careful or hire someone to do it. I would assume comcast routers are similar. |
| "if that **** wins we'll all hang from nooses" | |
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8:44 PM Jul 10