Protecting Against Key Reinstallation Attacks in WPA2 (KRACK)
Just recently, a paper was leaked in regards to a vulnerability in WPA2 that affects just about everyone who uses a wireless connection. More specifically, the vulnerability lies at the 3rd stage of the 4-way handshake used by WPA2 to provide authentication and session key agreement. The attack also requires an evil twin access point since the session key is derived from the MAC address.
The paper, written by Belgian researchers, Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens, is 16 pages long and goes into detail on the various exploitations possible. We don’t want to rehash everything here when you can go straight to the source, so for those who want to know the technical ins and outs of this vulnerability, we recommend reading about it from the horse’s mouth: https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/ccs2017.pdf
What most people probably want to know, though, is “how do I avoid getting hacked?” The safest and most immediate solution is switch to wired for the time being. Although the chances of a hack are low, if you live in an area with a high population density that has more technically inclined people, and if you’re responsible for protecting significant assets, your chances of experiencing a hack go up. So for now, and until patches are released by various vendors, we recommend moving to wired networking. For those of you on laptops without an Ethernet port, you can purchase USB to Ethernet dongles online or at your local tech store. Yes, this is inconvenient for many people, so each person will have to weigh that inconvenience vs. the sensitivity of the data they work with and make the best decision for them.