REDUCING Range

Nov 11, 2004 3 Replies

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Entropy1024 21 years ago

PPS.

> "If person A is using WPA with a strong passphrase, their data are
> secure." Yes, those are my words and I stand by them. Tell me, in what
> cup of tea did you derive the formula secure=unbreakable?
>
> If you have a formula to show an underlying weakness in WPA, believe
> me,
> I and several thousand mathematicians working at the NSA would love to
> see it.
> OK lets tackle this one thing at a time.

- If you have so much faith in WPA you believe it to be secure, for

it to be secure it has to be unbreakable.

- People thorough history have erroneously believed they have

invented secure systems. All were wrong. The German Enigma system is

a classic example of this.

- WPA has 3 main weaknesses that I know of. First, it does not offer

security support for IBSS. Second, WPA does not provide for

pre-authentication for multiple access points on the network. Third

but by no means last WPA does not support the advanced encryption

standard.

- If WPA is secure as you say why are they developing WPA2 it's

successor?

- As far as your NSA argument goes. I bet it would come as a great

relief to all leading nations security staff NSA/MI6 etc to know that

they can stop throwing millions of dollars/pounds/yen into there

quest for the ultimate system. It can now be bought at PC World for

the same price as a CD burner.

PS.

Whilst you are looking up Secure in a dictionary I would also suggest

you look up overconfident.

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Pat Henry 21 years ago

Okay, within the context of this discussion I will accept that secure and unbreakable are interchangeable terms, with the stipulation that it is understood that secure or unbreakable are relative terms bounded by a finite period of time.

You realize of course that STU communications are based on DES. So to answer you last question first, yes, my home computer bought at PC World has many orders of magnitude more processing power than the STU phone I used.

The NSA has spent millions of dollars on a replacement for DES. It is called AES. WPA does support AES; I am using AES on my home network.

So, let's cut to the chase...

I have a home Wi-Fi setup consisting of a router and three computers in radio contact with each other. I am using DHCP to assign IP addresses to the computers. I am not using MAC filtering. I am transmitting my SSID address "HACKME" ten times a second. I have WPA PSK using AES. My passphrase is successor?

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Pat Henry 21 years ago

Right on Andrew and this is precisely the point that I am leading up to with Entropy. It is so computationally infeasible to crack AES at this point in time, that my neighbor or anyone else who wants to see my Wi-Fi data will simple break in and steal my computer.

As for home security, I leave that in the hands of my daschund. She is far better equipped than I to see, hear, and smell things that go bump in the night.

Would you like to take a crack at breaking into the system that I described in my last post. Remember, stealing the computer does not count:-)

AndrewJ wrote:

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AndrewJ 21 years ago

The FBI doesn't know a lot of things but one thing they do know is almost 6/10 homes will be burgled over the next 10 years. It's way more likely you'll lose data to an intruder of your home than an intruder of your secure network.

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