The new Wi-Fi security protocol is not so secure. A series of newly discovered vulnerabilities allow hackers to steal passwords and data
The WPA3-Personal, that is, the third version of the Wi-Fi Protected Access security protocol that is supposed to ensure the invulnerability of wireless networks, is actually more than vulnerable. Just like its predecessors, WPA and WPA2, were vulnerable. The WPA protocol, in all its versions, is the one that manages also the authentication through password to Wi-Fi networks.
In the last days, two university researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Eyal Ronen have discovered 5 different vulnerabilities of this standard, renamed “Dragonblood”: one vulnerability to “denial of service” attacks, one to “downgrade” attacks and two to “side-channel” attacks. These are all classic types of hacker attacks, well known for years and that, in theory, should not challenge an advanced protection system such as WPA3.
How Dragonblood works
The denial of service attack is the least risky one: it consists in a bombardment of access requests against modem routers in order to make them crash. The damage consists in sending the network in tilt, but there are no data leaks. Downgrade attacks, on the other hand, can exploit a flaw in the Dragonfly key exchange mechanism of the WPA3 standard, through which clients, i.e. user devices, authenticate themselves on a WPA3 router or access point. The flaw consists in the fact that the WPA3 protocol allows the use of old and insecure password exchange systems. And therefore can be hacked by hackers. Finally, also side-channel attacks allow to recover part of the network password and, if repeated in a short time, the complete password. It should be noted, however, that Dragonblood vulnerabilities also affect the EAP protocol used by the previous WPA and WPA2 standards. On networks protected by WPA and WPA2, a hacker is able to pretend to be a user and access Wi-Fi without knowing the password.
Dragonblood: the patch is already ready
Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi Alliance has already released a patch that can be distributed by router and access point manufacturers to plug the newly discovered flaws. In the press release announcing the patch, the Alliance also states that the number of devices potentially affected by these vulnerabilities is very small. That’s because, in fact, WPA3 is a fledgling standard (it was officially unveiled in late June 2018) and there are still very few Wi-Fi routers and access points that are compatible with this standard.