Is your Wireless network secure? If your answer is “Yes, I use WEP encryption”, then probably you need to think again. I have been using WEP encryption for sometime and hence was not amused when I saw this news!

Code breakers have discovered a technique for extracting a 104-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) key in under a minute.

Under a minute? Basically RC4 stream cipher used by WEP(Wired Equivalent Privacy) has cryptographic weakness which is exploited by WiFi crackers. You can checkout more details of the WiFi exploit here.

We were able to extend Klein’s attack and optimize it for usage against WEP. Using our version, it is possible to recover a 104 bit WEP key with probability 50% using just 40,000 captured packets. For 60,000 available data packets, the success probability is about 80% and for 85,000 data packets about 95%. Using active techniques like deauth and ARP re-injection, 40,000 packets can be captured in less than one minute under good condition.

It is time for me to switch to WPA which is supposed to be much more secure. I mean, till it is cracked by somebody else!

But in a world where there are so many insecure WiFi networks, WEP weakness is probably the last thing you worry about!