Test attack WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK by using pyrit

The “Wi-Fi Protected Access” protocol (in it’s revisions WPA and WPA2) is one of today’s most important security related protocols. Wigle.net counts about fifteen million wireless networks worldwide and the numbers keep climbing dramatically. After the catastrophic failure of WEP, the all new and shiny WPA now almost completely took over protecting the public airspace.

WPA was designed with the small-office/home user in focus; while the protocol allows a sophisticated key-exchange to take place, most implementations like DSL/Cable/LAN-routers prefer the “Pre-Shared Key” mode. Exchange of the Pairwise Master Key (we will hear that term a lot) is simplified by using a common password that is known to all communicating parties

Pyrit takes a step ahead in attacking WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK, the protocol that today de-facto protects public WIFI-airspace. The project’s goal is to estimate the real-world security provided by these protocols. Pyrit does not provide binary files or wordlists and does not encourage anyone to participate or engage in any harmful activity. This is a research project, not a cracking tool. Pyrit combines the power and convenience of Python with the high performance of modern Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).

Pyrit’s implementation allows to create massive databases, pre-computing part of the WPA/WPA2-PSK authentication phase in a space-time-tradeoff. The performance gain for real-world-attacks is in the range of three orders of magnitude which urges for re-consideration of the protocol’s security. Exploiting the computational power of GPUs, this is currently by far the most powerful attack against one of the world’s most used security-protocols.

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for more info : ERM Blog