WPA Cracker in the Cloud

Wireless Networks have long been a threat to our network security. Security freaks know it that breaking a wireless WEP network takes couple of seconds. All it takes is to capture those IVs and calculate the key by simple maths.

When WEP was launched it was called Wired equivalent privacy, Now people call it Wasted

On the contrary, WPA based networks are still better, it need dictionary brute force which can be very slow at times coz all the permutations and combinations will take several hours over standard core duo or quad cores. However, what if you could leverage the Power of Cloud computing to do this, it would take couple of minutes.

Confused by WEP, WPA, TKIP, AES & Other Wireless Security Acronyms?

The idea has been taken by WPACracker, a cloud based service that promises to break those WPA keys that took 4-5 days in under 20 minutes.

WPA-PSK networks are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, but running a respectable-sized dictionary over a WPA network handshake can take days or weeks. WPA Cracker gives you access to a 400CPU cluster that will run your network capture against a 135 million word dictionary created specifically for WPA passwords. While this job would take over 5 days on a contemporary dual-core PC, on our cluster it takes an average of 20 minutes, for only $17.

Well, good for crackers, but what about the Security admin nightmares?

We sure need new encryption standards, don’t we?