Last year we had an announcement from WPA3 about the grand upgrade for protecting Wi-Fi networks from password-cracking attacks. But the new research is showing that WPA3 has flaws that can be used for finding out a Wi-Fi router’s password. That’s a serious problem considering the new generation Wi-Fi security, and the fact that you could easily trick the technology to leak the password from routers is even more severe.
What features has the WAP3?
After WAP2 has failed in protecting the Wi-Fi password, the WAP3 have come with a fix named “Dragonfly handshake.” This feature can make a Wi-Fi network more resistant to offline password guessing. Having WPA3, the hacker could crack the password only if it remains around the Wi-Fi network. Another important feature is “forward secrecy” that won’t permit the hacker to decrypt previous data captured from your Wi-Fi stream.
Why Isn’t WPA3 Safe Anymore?
However, right now WPA3 isn’t as safe as it seems, because the protocol is backward compatible with the older version. More precisely, that means that if a PC or smartphone moves from WPA3 to WPA2 when connecting to Wi-Fi, the devices will be tricked into leaking data. If this access is granted, any hacker can spy over any unencrypted information sent through the Wi-Fi network. And access to data means stealing passwords, credit cards, chat messages, emails and many more.
Moreover, two other vulnerabilities have been found in the WPA3 protocol. The hacker can use the existing WPA2 cracking tools and hardware and can force all 8-character lowercase passwords with EC2 from Amazon, and the cost will be minimal.
What Can Be Done?
For sure there will not be many hackers that would stand nearby the Wi-Fi network. What a user can do is to use a complex and long password for the Wi-Fi network. The researcher’s advice to never let a device switch back to the WPA2 protocol if your network can support WPA3.
