In our earlier posts for demystifying Wi-Fi ^[1] we had told you about encryptions used by Wi-Fi ^[2]. In that WPA encryption was supposedly one of the most secure encryptions you could use to protect your Wi-Fi connection. However, it looks like for $17 it would take 20-40 minutes to crack WPA encryption on any Wi-Fi.

The site in question WPA Cracker ^[3] has put up a introduction which states this.

WPA Cracker is a cloud cracking service for penetration testers and network auditors who need to check the security of WPA-PSK protected wireless networks.

WPA-PSK networks are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, but running a respectable-sized dictionary over a WPA network handshake can take days or weeks. WPA Cracker gives you access to a 400CPU cluster that will run your network capture against a 135 million word dictionary created specifically for WPA passwords. While this job would take over 5 days on a contemporary dual-core PC, on our cluster it takes an average of 20 minutes, for only $17.

The service was launched by a very well known security researches Moxie Marlinspike, who was obviously unhappy that cracking WPA-SPK passwords took a few days or weeks in general. The main purpose of the site is to quickly establish whether a Wi-Fi network’s password is crackable or not. A regular PC with a dual-core processor would take more than 5 days to run more than 135 million possible combinations or dictionary attacks to crack the WPA-PSK password.

WPA Cracker is mainly aimed at businesses who want to verify whether their network is vulnerable to dictionary attacks or not. With a 400 CPU cluster it becomes much more quicker and easier to understand the security of a Wi-Fi network and apply changes before they are actually compromised.

Rest aside, cracking a Wi-Fi network could produce a goldmine of information. And it is better to have a strong password ^[4] rather than getting compromised.

[Tech World News ^[5] via Techno Friends ^[6]]