WiFi encryption cracked by Russians using Nvidia graphics cards

By Davey Winder
Saturday, 11 October 2008 15:18

Home IT

A Russian password recovery outfit has announced a patent pending technology that dramatically accelerates the brute-force cracking of WiFi security encryption when a compatible Nvidia graphics card is employed. So, is WiFi security now a dead duck?

ElcomSoft was established in 1990 and is a privately owned software company headquartered in Moscow, Russia. It says it specialises in "Windows productivity and utility applications for businesses and end users" although what it really does is produce software to 'recover' passwords.

There is a legitimate need for such software, of course, and anyone who has ever found themselves with a password protected document or file which they can no longer access due to forgetfulness or because that password has been maliciously changed will understand that.

ElcomSoft is also a member of the Russian Cryptology Association and has been providing products and computer forensics training and evidence consulting services  to law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies.

Now it has announced the availability of a new product which accelerates the recovery of both WPA and WPA2 encryption that are used for WiFi security. It does this by employing the latest Nvidia video cards and a little bit of patent-pending GPU acceleration technology.

According to ElcomSoft's own press release "ElcomSoft Distributed Password Recovery allows using laptop, desktop or server computers equipped with supported Nvidia video cards to break Wi-Fi encryption up to 100 times faster than by using CPU only."

It claims that Governments, forensic and corporate users will benefit from this vastly increased WiFi protection breaking speed. It does not mention that the same applies to any hacker, cracker and chancer looking for easy access to your WiFi network.

WPA and WPA2 encryption has been considered inherently more secure than the now all-but-defunct WEP which only a numpty would use. Indeed, WPA and WPA2 encryption has only really been at risk from a brute force attack.

But with billions of possible combinations, it can take years to break into such a protected network. Unless you use a distributed attack with GPU-accelerated algorithms. Which is what ElcomSoft is touting.

So how does the new ElcomSoft and Nvidia attack work? More detail on page 2...

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