May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

WEP2 Security Analysis

Submission

Slide 1

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Goals
To (briefly) summarize security weaknesses discovered in WEP v1.0 To analyze security vulnerabilities of WEP2 To recommend potential improvements

Submission

Slide 2

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Classes of Attacks Against WEP v1.0

IV (key) reuse [Walker, Berkeley team, Arbaugh]
Made possible by small IV space in WEPv1.0, lack of IV replay protection Enables statistical attack against ciphertexts w/replayed IVs

Known plaintext attack [Walker, Berkeley team, Arbaugh]

Lots of known plaintext in IP traffic: ICMP, ARP, TCP ACK, etc. Can send pings from Internet through AP to snooping attacker Enables recovery of key stream of length N for a given IV Can forge packets of size N by reusing IV in absence of a keyed MIC May only know a portion of the plaintext (e.g. IP header) Possible to recover M octets of the keystream, M < N Via repeated probing, can extend keystream from M to N [Arbaugh] Possible to flip bits in realtime, adjust CRC32, divert traffic to attacker
Enabled by linearity of CRC32, absence of keyed MIC
Submission Slide 3 Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

Partial known plaintext [Berkeley team, Arbaugh]

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Classes of Attacks (contd)

Authentication forging [Berkeley team]
WEP v1.0 encrypts challenge using IV chosen by client Recovery of key stream for a given IV enables re-use of that IV for forging WEP v1.0 authentication Does not provide key, so cant join LAN

Denial of service
Disassociate, reassociate messages not authenticated

Dictionary attack
Possible where WEP keys derived from passwords

Realtime decryption [Berkeley team, Arbaugh]

Repeated IV reuse, probing enables building of a dictionary of IVs, key streams Enables decryption of traffic in realtime Possible to store dictionary due to small IV space
Need 1500 octets of key stream for each IV 2^24 * 1500 octets = 24 GB

Submission

Slide 4

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

WEP2
Increases size of IV space to 128 bits Key may be changed periodically via IEEE 802.1X reauthentication to avoid staleness No keyed MIC No authentication for reassociate, disassociate No IV replay protection Use of Kerberos for authentication within IEEE 802.1X

Submission

Slide 5

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

WEP2 Security Analysis

IV (key) reuse
Larger IV, re-key support makes unintentional reuse much less likely Without IV replay protection, intentional reuse still possible

Known/Partial plaintext attacks

Not affected by larger IV Probing, key stream extension still possible in absence of keyed MIC Still possible to recover key streams via ping from Internet Can still forge packets by reusing IV, key stream Can still divert traffic in absence of non-linear, keyed MIC

Authentication forging attack

Not affected by larger IV, since intentional IV replay still possible

Dictionary attack
New vulnerabilities introduced by mandatory KerberosV authentication

Realtime decryption
Much more difficult due to larger IV
2^128 * 1500 octets = 5.1E32 GB
Submission Slide 6 Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

KerberosV Dictionary Attack Vulnerabilities

References
Bellovin & Meritt Limitations of the Kerberos authentication system, USENIX 1991 Wu, T. A Real-World Analysis of Kerberos Password Security, 1998 http://theory.stanford.edu/~tjw/krbpass.html

Scenario
Attacker snoops AS_REQ/AS_REP exchange, recovers passwords offline In popular 802.11 networks (hot spots), may be possible to collect many such exchanges in a single attempt

Vulnerabilities
PADATA or TGT encrypted with client Key derived from password via STRING-TO-KEY(P)

Results [Wu, 1998]

Password checkers not successful in significantly increasing password entropy Structure of TGT (service name = krbtgt) enables verification of key guess by decrypting only 14 octets; similar issues with PADATA Use of DES to encrypt TGT enables use of parallel DES cracking techniques Of 25,000 sample TGTs, 2045 could be decrypted in two weeks using a cluster of 3 UltraSPARC-2 (200 Mhz) and 5 UltraSPARC-1 (167 Mhz) machines Today, 15 off-the-shelf PCs could accomplish the same thing in 1 day at a cost of < $15K

Submission

Slide 7

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Solutions
Machine versus user authentication
Machine keys typically have full entropy

Use of alterative ciphers in Kerberos

Draft-raeburn-krb-gssapi-krb5-3des-01.txt Draft-raeburn-krb-rijndael-krb-00.txt

Revision to Kerberos [Wu]

SRP used for Kerberos pre-authentication Derived key used to encrypt TGT

Submission

Slide 8

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Reassociate, Disassociate & Beacon Security

Currently, reassociate, disassociate messages are not secure
Enables denial of service attacks

Proposal
Add an authenticator to reassociate and disassociate messages Replay counter, HMAC-SHA1 (replay counter || SourceMAC || destMAC || transmit key) On disassociate: ignore if HMAC is not valid On reassociate: validate authenticator via move-request to old AP; if invalid, old AP ignores move-request

Beacon security
Currently, beacon messages are not authenticated Enables station to roam to a rogue AP Proposal: validate beacon before reassociating
Replay Counter, HMAC-SHA1 (replay counter || sourceMAC || multicast key) Any station can forge this, but better than nothing

Submission

Slide 9

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Summary Vulnerabilities Thwarted

Attack Unintentional IV reuse Intentional IV reuse Realtime decryption Known plaintext Partial known plaintext Authentication forging Denial of Service Dictionary attack WEPv1.0 WEP v2.0 + KerbV X X AES + KerbV X X X X X X w/fix AES + SRP X X X X X X w/fix X

w/fix

Submission

Slide 10

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Conclusions
WEP2 not significantly more secure than WEPv1.0
Small IV only part of the problem; absence of a keyed MIC remains a major deficiency Denial of service attacks not addressed WEP2 should not be treated as a significant security enhancement (should state this explicitly in security considerations section)

Kerberos V vulnerable to dictionary attack

Most important in Hot spot scenarios where many exchanges could be recovered
Expect at least 10 percent of passwords to be crackable in 24 hours Downside greater than WEP v1.0 vulnerabilities: not only can traffic be decrypted, but attacker can assume user identity and access other services!

Protocol modifications required to address the vulnerability

Support for 3DES, AES ciphers Support for SRP pre-authentication

Backward compatibility issues

AP with built-in KDC
AP would need software upgrade to support new ciphers, pre-auth types

AP in pass-through mode (IAKERB or RADIUS)

AP does not need to understand AS_REQ/AS_REP, so no issue

Submission

Slide 11

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft

May 2001

doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/253

Recommendations
Examine feasibility of adding keyed MIC to WEP2 Without keyed MIC, downplay security value of WEP2
Make this clear up front

Choose a mandatory-to-implement authentication method resistant to dictionary attack

Example: SRP: RFC 2945 EAP-SRP: draft-ietf-pppext-eap-srp-01.txt

Submission

Slide 12

Bernard Aboba, Microsoft