The IT Nerd

This isn’t good. There’s a exploit that affects any device that uses WiFi and the WPA2 security protocol. Dubbed “KRACK” or Key Reinstallation Attack, it is scary for this reason:

The bug, known as “KRACK” for Key Reinstallation Attack, exposes a fundamental flaw in WPA2, a common protocol used in securing most modern wireless networks. Mathy Vanhoef, a computer security academic, who found the flaw, said the weakness lies in the protocol’s four-way handshake, which securely allows new devices with a pre-shared password to join the network.

That weakness can, at its worst, allow an attacker to decrypt network traffic from a WPA2-enabled device, hijack connections, and inject content into the traffic stream.

In other words: hackers can eavesdrop on your network traffic.

This affects everything from your iPhone to the debit card machine in a restaurant, not to mention IoT devices. That’s not good. Here’s what’s worse. Patches are slowly rolling out now. But it’s an open question as to when a device might get a patch. Assuming that it gets one at all. So you may end up with a device that never gets patched and is at risk for pwnage via this exploit. Hopefully device manufacturers get it in gear and protect their users quickly.

This entry was posted on October 16, 2017 at 8:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags KRACK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.