06/11/2008

A group of researchers have claimed to have cracked the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard.

Erik Tews and Martin Beck will reveal their findings at next week's PacSec conference in Tokyo.

It is believed that the two were able to read data being sent from a router to a laptop and could also send false information to a client who was using the router.

This was achieved by breaking the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) in just under a quarter of an hour, according to PacSec organiser Dragos Ruiu.

However, they were not able to read secure data being transported to the router from the PC.

Experts already knew that TKIP could be broken using a dictionary attack but the speed of the researcher's attack will cause worry, with WPA used as the security protocol for many wireless networks.

Mr Ruiu said that the researchers first tricked the router into sending a vast array of data which made the hack easier, but a 'mathematical breakthrough' was also responsible.