There may be some room for improvement with the WPA3 standard. WPA3, a Wi-Fi security protocol launched by the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2018 — is, in practice, better than WPA2, but still fraught with security flaws, according to a recent research paper.
“In light of our presented attacks, we believe that WPA3 does not meet the standards of a modern security protocol,” wrote authors Mathy Vanhoef and Eyal Ronen. The pair argued that many of the same attacks continue to work and will likely remain effective for years, especially with lower-cost Wi-Fi devices.
The WPA3 protocol uses a new technology named “Dragonfly,” also formally known as “Simultaneous Authentication of Equals.” The protocol improves upon previous four-way “handshake” with a Pairwise Master Key as well as “forward secrecy.” In combination, the idea was that WPA3 would be more resistant to password guessing attacks.
It’s thought that the Alliance failed to listen to researchers’ recommendations about moving away from hash-to-group and hash-to-curve password encoding. The end result is a series of “Dragonblood” proof-of-concept exploits. The exploits also work against networks using the Extensible Authentication Protocol, or EAP, provided they have the EAP-pwd protocol equipped. It’s thought that with EAP-pwd, an attacker could impersonate any user without knowing the person’s password.
The simplest WPA3 exploits involve a transition mode that lets WPA3-ready devices work in backwards compatibility with those that aren’t. Another set involves side-channel leaks that leak info about the passwords being used.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has stated that the paper “identified vulnerabilities in a limited number of early implementations of WPA3-Personal,” and that WPA3-Personal is not only “in the early stages of deployment,” but that “the small number of device manufacturers that are affected have already started deploying patches to resolve the issues.”
The “Dragonblood” exploits have yet to be identified as used by real-world hackers.
Mac, iPhone, and iPad owners can mitigate WPA3 threats by updating compatible Wi-Fi routers to the latest available firmware. They should also use unique, ideally randomly-generated router passwords that are at least 13 characters long — password management apps may make it easier to meet requirements.
It’s presently unclear as to whether Apple’s line of AirPort routers will receive a firmware update to guard against the exploits.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via AppleInsider and Ars Technica