Replacing WEP for Wireless Security 79
i.r.id10t writes "Over at infoworld.com they have an article about the organization that certifies wireless LAN products under the Wi-Fi name revealed new specifications Thursday for how vendors should make their products more secure. The guidelines call for new mechanisms to replace the current security system, based on WEP, which has come under fire for being too easy to circumvent. The certification body, Wi-Fi Alliance, plans to lay the mechanisms out as optional features beginning in February and require them for Wi-Fi compliance about six months later, said Dennis Eaton, chairman of the Wi-Fi Alliance."
cool! an arms race (Score:2, Funny)
WEP? (Score:5, Insightful)
The guidelines call for new mechanisms to replacement the current security system, based on WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol), which has come under fire for being too easy to circumvent.
The last I checked, WEP stood for Wired Equivalent Privacy. Has to make you wonder how technically accurate the rest of the article is...
Re:WEP? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:WEP? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:WEP? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I don't know if the change is official yet but I have been deliberately trying to change the name.
The problems with WEP started with the name. It contains a broken metaphor and dooms the project to failure. First it asserts that privacy is the issue, ignoring integrity and access control is a typical rookie mistake
Second we have security by analogy. If X is secure and we provide the security characteristics of X we have security - NOT. Ross Andersson has some great examples here. I use WEP as my example. The problem is that the security threats faced in a wireless protocol are completely unrelated to those of a wired protocol. It is no longer necessary to have a physical connection to access the network.
Bodging the requirements means that WEP did not address important issues like how to deal with the sacked employee who is surfing the internal network from the car park.
Yet another problem is that to some people 'privacy' is simply a weaker form of confidentiality. I don't think that it was being considered in the comsec sense of a very challenging form of confidentiality where you attempt to disclose information but with strings attached.
Re:WEP? (Score:5, Informative)
I found a few places, like this [multitech.com], that say either is OK:
But Google finds over 20 times as many hits on "Wired Equivalent Privacy," so that's the de facto winner. I'm guessing "Wireless Encryption Protocol" is just such a good expansion of the acronym that it's sprouted up all by itself. That's actually what I had understood "WEP" to mean until 10 minutes ago. :)
I've got a copy of the spec on my desk (Score:2)
It says WEP is Wired Equivalent Privacy and makes absolutely no mention whatsoever of a "Wireless Encryption Protocol". The latter term may have grown into some level of colloquial use, but has no backing by the official standard at all.
I heard WireLESS Eqv. Thanks for correction. (Score:2)
It says WEP is Wired Equivalent Privacy
Thanks for the correction. I had heard it called "wireLESS equivalent OF privacy", which made enough sense (given the 802.11b context) that I didn't look deeper.
Re:WEP? (Score:2)
Re:WEP? (Score:1)
Re:WEP? (Score:2)
Re:WEP Acronym (Score:3, Informative)
This does seem to be a reasonably accurate descripion of the security level, and this is how I explain it to the execs here who want to set up wireless at home.
Re:WEP Acronym (Score:2)
Re:WEP Acronym (Score:2)
If you actually have sensitive material going out onto the Internet, without encryption, then who's fault is that? Being able to sniff your internet traffic is nothing compared to being able to sniff your LAN traffic.
Hmm, maybe it is time to start using all IPSec internally....
Re:Yeah, but most people don't even use WEP (Score:1)
why don't they realize (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why don't they realize (Score:1)
Re:why don't they realize (Score:3, Interesting)
At some point, I'd like to write a tool that would set this all up transparently, but that's in the distant future. (Is there a way to add a tunnel to a running SSH session?)
Would this do it for you? (Score:2)
If your laptop isn't linux, then you could run vncserver on your workstation, ssh to it with the VNC port forwarded, then point your laptop's vnc client to localhost, using the forwarded port.
You want it automatic? A simple shell script would do the trick.
Re:Would this do it for you? (Score:1)
What I really had in mind was something completely transparent. Something that works like this:
Mozilla asks network interface for a socket connection to slashdot.org:80. Network interface - which got my ssh login and password for the workstation at startup - immediately opens a tunnel through the Linux box to slashdot.org:80, and hands that tunnel to the browser somehow. Does that make sense? And does such a product exist?
If it doesn't, it'd make a nice transparent VPN client. The problem, of course, is that it wouldn't support UDP or ICMP off the bat....
Re:Would this do it for you? (Score:1)
you can get complicated and do it all with keys and ca's etc but you could just used a preshared key. it works great for me.
and if you route down it then tcp, udp and icmp all work fine as it's a virtual network interface, ie any tcp/ip traffic will flow over it fine.
dave
Secure by default (Score:5, Interesting)
But every wireless product I've ever used (and there have been a lot of them) shipped by default with WEP disabled, I guess to make it more plug-and-play. In my mind if you want to make wireless networking more secure, start by shipping the products with WEP enabled by default, and require the user to configure a unique SSID and WEP passphrase when they setup the equipment.
I mean, you could have a rock-solid encryption protocol, but if nobody is using it... what's the point?
Re:WEP isn't "good enough" (Score:2, Informative)
If you are going to quote me, do so in context. What I said was:
"WEP would be a 'good enough' security protocol for the average application..."
The key phrase here is "for the average application". Meaning, home LAN, small business, or anything where high security is not a tantamount concern. WEP is "good enough" to provide a reasonable level of deterance against the casual intruder. Is WEP an end-all-be-all security panacea? No. And I don't think anyone said it was, least of all me.
Re:Secure by default (Score:5, Insightful)
But what I want to say is, the other way of looking at what you say is this - if the manufacturers all ship with WEP on by default, the people using it would be lulled into a -false sense of security.
(And if the manufacturers ship with WEP by default, then there'd be quite a few people leaving them on with the default keys... yet another problem).
Re:Secure by default (Score:1)
People have a false sense of security about a lot of things. Do you think having an alarm system on your house makes you "secure"? No, but it's more secure than having nothing at all. The main problem with wireless networking today is that people ALREADY have a false sense of security. Most people don't realize that having an AP on a small LAN in their house, is like inviting public access to their systems. These are the same type of people that hook up a PC to a broadband connection without a firewall. They already have a false sense of security, because they are ignorant of the dangers.
And if the manufacturers ship with WEP by default, then there'd be quite a few people leaving them on with the default keys...
Like I said, force the user to choose a unique SSID and passphrase when they setup the AP or card. In other words, don't provide a default, require that the user enter their own information before the product will work. One thing to remember here is that in most cases we are simply trying to deter casual intruders. Anyone who REALLY wants to get into your system, will find a way. What we really need is just a measure in place to make things harder for the average script kiddie with a laptop and a Pringles can.
WEP as expression of intent (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, it looks more like a solution.
WEP, now that it's so thoroughly cracked, is useless for actual security against even a mildly-interested eavesdropper. But WEP also serves another funciton.
In much of the computing industry and culture, permissions serve another purpose - the expression of intent. A read-any file is intended to be read without bothering to ask, a read-owner-only file is intended to be private (i.e. don't break the lock without asking even if you're the sysadmin), and so on.
Many people deliberately leave their WiFi hubs open and allow them to be used (on a non-interference-with-owner's-use basis), for a variety of reasons. The configuration COULD be used to indicate intent - open = go ahead, WEP on = I want it private, etc.
But that is compromised by the practice of having WEP off by default. If WEP is on it's clear that the owner DOESN'T want you using it without at least asking permission. But if it's off, was it because the owner is granting permission, or because he just left the default in place, typically through ignorance.
Shipping with WEP on and a default key adds a clear third category:
- WEP off: It was TURNED off, a clear sign of intent to let the port be generally used (or total cluelessness).
- WEP on, non-default key: The key was changed, a clear sign that the user INTENDED the port to be reserved for those to whom the owner granted permission.
- WEP on, default key: The configuration is default. The user's just plugged it in and started using it, so his intent is not clearly expressed.
Unfortunately, every security option that's on by default means an additional barrier between a new user and getting something to work. So it represents a flood of service calls, and a heavy extra expense. Thus, vendors have an incentive to ship products with security options off by default, leaving the user wide open until they become sufficiently educated (or burned) to pay attention to plugging the security holes.
Re:Secure by default (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Secure by default (Score:1)
Re:Secure by default (Score:1)
All in all, they're nice units for relatively nontechnical folks in my experience.
Re:Secure by default (Score:1)
WEP is just broken (Score:2)
No, it wouldn't. WEP is just broken--it can be listened into with one of a number of simple software downloads.
Compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Great! More non-standard possibly incompatible implementatins ahead.
This would actually help a lot, as long as "activated" doesn't mean "password set to 1234".This article also didn't say anything about vender support, especially whether all the existing 802.11b gear will get new firmware. This is a really big deal for someone like a Uni or Wireless ISP where students/customers are going to try to buy the cheapest stuff they can find and expect it to work.
On the back page... (Score:5, Funny)
Why, oh why... (Score:2)
Seriously, can't they just umm... adopt others' work?
Weak key avoidance/WEP Plus/etc (Score:5, Informative)
However, Cisco APs won't do that with my Orinoco cards. Orinoco APs won't do that with Cisco cards. Which is why I'd welcome some sort of standard "WEP plus" method implemented across the board. As each manufacturer implemented their own weak key avoidance algorithm via a firmware update on the cards and the AP itself, it should be a trivial task to implement a standard method, assuming the WiFi standards group doesn't make any stupid mistakes and require more powerful hardware. Wireless has been the hot technology lately, educational institutions have been the big users of this technology so the last thing they'll want to do is shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for another 100 access points (in the case of Monash here in Melbourne).
Also remember that WEP 128 (RC4) is NOT part of the Wi-Fi standard! I think they should address this one while they're at it as well.
Re:Weak key avoidance/WEP Plus/etc (Score:2, Informative)
This shortens the time before the IV space has been exhausted and security is compromised through Key/IV pair reuse.
So it is six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Re:Weak key avoidance/WEP Plus/etc (Score:1)
http://www.orinocowireless.com/upload/docu
Should be interoperable just fine however you
will not get the advantage of weak key avoidance
if any of the stations using the same shared key
do not have it implemented.
Note that there are other attacks that this does
not protect against. I would not count on WEP
for secure communications.
So, where does one get Wi-Fi Alliance standards? (Score:1)
Re:So, where does one get Wi-Fi Alliance standards (Score:1)
802.11i docs are available to 802.11 members.
To get the 802.11 docs you must attend an 802.11 meeting and pay the up front money ($250-$400 depending on the phase of the moon. I believe WiFi alliance membership costs money.
So a stay-at-home hacker is going to have a hard time implementing WPA/TKIP for Linux unless someone is naughty and slips them copies of the specs.
Re:So, where does one get Wi-Fi Alliance standards (Score:1)
Wi-Fi alliance membership costs $20,000 per year, according to their web site. [wi-fi.org]
Re:So, where does one get Wi-Fi Alliance standards (Score:1)
This site is best place I have seen for wireless
security. It has a link to the 802.1X stuff.
Note IEEE has been making its specs available in
PDF.
Re:So, where does one get Wi-Fi Alliance standards (Score:1)
Re:So, where does one get Wi-Fi Alliance standards (Score:1)
The Wi-Fi WPA standard is based on a draft IEEE standard. Draft standards are not available for free download. In fact, as I understand it most drafts are not available at all to people outside the working group (though some draft standards seem to be available for purchase -- how does this work?)
Availability of IEEE 802 draft standards (Score:1)
AFAIK no draft standards are available for purchase. 802, like most standards organizations, works hard to limit draft distribution outside the organization (and to stop companies that advertise "compliance" to a draft). Drafts are, by definition, unapproved by the organization. Since they change often, they can cause confusion; also, it is felt that interested persons can best improve the draft by becoming active in the standards organization itself. After all, anyone can attend a meeting; at the 802.11/.15/.18/.19 meetings a Wi-Fi LAN and server is installed, over which attendees can download draft standards to their laptops 'til their hearts are content.
The next meeting [ieee.org] is November 10-15 in Kauai, Hawaii; the one following that is January 12-17, 2003 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
But is it easy to implement? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wireless manufacturers are doing such a poor job now "wizardizing" or even simply mentioning security concerns in the setup of the access point/wireless card, you could have DH encryption on the thing and 70% of the AP's out there would still be wide open.
Also, I don't see how this will affect the majority of the wireless access pionts currently out there. Will the current access points be able to inherit this functionality via a BIOS flashe to support this encrytion? and if so, how many people will actually do it?
Stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't trust the wire (or wireless). YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!!
Why try to create new technology for this? The problem can be solved with technology OFF THE SHELF.
Linksys makes a "VPN router" that uses IPSEC and 3DES for under $100. It works fine with windows 2000 ipsec and many many others. I use it with OpenBSD. Linksys also makes wireless access points. Combine the two devices! Problem solved.
Now if linksys would combine the two devices into 1 box and write some clear documentation for the newbies, they would have a great product!
Are you listening linksys? d-link? netgear?
Hmmm. Maybe I should go patent this idea.
Re:Stupid! (Score:2)
Too late. I've got prior art from an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot that dates back to 10/31/02.
Re:Stupid! (Score:1)
Really, if it were that easy.
Government Security Flaw (Score:2, Interesting)
This hasn't been explained well.. (Score:5, Informative)
WPA is a renaming of SSN. This is based around a scheme called TKIP (temporal key integrity protocol).
TKIP attempts to wrap WEP in mechanisms to address all the currently known attacks against WEP. This is with the express intention of allowing it to be provided as a software upgrade to existing hardware.
TKIP does not attempt to be super secure. It does various bad things from a cryptographic standpoint. It is just that exploits haven't been discovered yet.
The mechanisms of TKIP are:
1) Key and IV mixing. The IV and the key are cryptographically mixed to avoid weak key attacks.
2) Longer IV. The IV is 48 bits, not 24. Preventing Key/IV pair reuse.
3) An MSDU level MAC (Message Authentication Code) called a MIC (to avoid overloading the term MAC). This gives proper message authentication and replay protection. The WEP ICV fails badly in this respect.
4) An 802.1x derived protocol for mutual STA-AP and AP-STA authentication and key distribution.
Things to keep in mind are..
1) TKIP fails in its goal to be backwards compatible with some existing hardware. It will not work on some manufacturers equipment, since they cannot insert the mixed key into the system at a point to replace the RC4 WEP seed.
2) This is a stopgap to hold out until real security can be provided via 802.11i, using some mode of AES.
3) It is not using vanilla 802.1x. The 802.1x spec has been rewritten in places to provide for the needs of 802.11. So it is not enough to just read 802.1x. You also need to be aware of the as yet unpublished changes in 802.1aa and 802.11i.
Re:This hasn't been explained well.. (Score:1)
This is what concerns me about the whole WPA initiative. How are we to make reasoned decisions about whether to purchase and deploy WPA products if their security is based on unpublished standards.
I really hope the Wi-Fi Alliance and IEEE come to some kind of arrangement to allow these drafts to be sold to the public -- otherwise this is just another proprietory encryption scheme...
People are still USING this Swiss Cheese? (Score:5, Informative)
Really, really. It is not that hard. Consider anything wireless to be untrusted, and require that they establish a VPN connection to your wired network. Set the clients to not accept any communications from outside this VPN. This technology has existed seemingly forever and IS tried and true.
Re:People are still USING this Swiss Cheese? (Score:1)
Re:People are still USING this Swiss Cheese? (Score:2)
802.11 authenication (Score:2, Informative)
A Technical Comparison of TTLS and PEAP [oreillynet.com]
ZDNet also has a good overview [zdnet.com] of the proposed solutions.
Hmph (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one have no faith in this body whatsoever. I use cables, and so does anyone who values their privacy.
Good. Do I have to buy ANOTHER WAP? (Score:1)
While we're on the subject: Has anyone else noticed just how clueless LinkSys' tech support is on their own WAPs?
PKI (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PKI (Score:1)
Re:PKI (Score:2)
Re:what about kerberos? (Score:1)
you are paying bills from home I assume you are
using the the http protcol and the agency you
are dealing with is using ssl/tsl. That should
secure your communication. If you want to
provide confidentiality (IE encyption) then ssl
the authentication is encrypted but other than
that it is up to the app to decide. For instance
you can use rlogin/telnet and kerberos in either
encypted or plain text. (the auth will be
encrypted assuming its a kerberoized host but the
rest of the communication will be plain text)
Wired Equivalant privacy is just that. (Score:2)
wep wasent designed to be a complete security solution, it was meant to be discourageing to outsiders
Last Post! (Score:1)
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola
was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to
improve
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
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