Your Wi-Fi Is No Longer Secure

Latest research on WPA2 protocol by Belgian researchers reveal that your Wi-Fi which you have come to really on so much, for more years had all along left a backdoor open for any Cyber villain to ravage your precious information. Through this hatch your passwords, emails, chats, videos and photos are vulnerable. Anyone who tries hard enough can grab them by working round flaws in the industry standard.


Your Home and office devices which includes phones, smart watches computers, TVs, printers, game consoles and routers are hooked up on your Wi-Fi device secured by a the standard WPA2. WPA2 is a recent standard that replaced severe flaws in the WEP.


The research revealed that your once formidable local network of devices and gadgets linked to the internet via your Wi-Fi can fall to recent Cyber attack methods know simply as KRACK (Key Reinstallation AttaCK). This vulnerability is thought capable of affecting all Wi-Fi Networks. The flaw allows a hacker to intercept information transmitted to these devices.

Mathy Vanhof

Mathy Vanhoef of KU Leuven, Belgium said that this flaw is intrinsic in the WPA standard protocol itself. Mathy explained that operating systems such as Linus, Windows, iOS, Android, OpenBSD and also Linksys routers, Internet of Things Devices and other wireless devices using MediaTek chips are all susceptible to KRACK attack.

“The attack works against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks,” Mathy said.


READ ALSO Third Largest Diamond Sold For $53 Million


Mathy implores the public not to panic yet in a bid not to cause widespread anxiety “There is no immediate risk, and certainly not to the overwhelming majority of people,” He said. He was not sure if such attack has ever been conducted in real life.

Vanhoef's Illustration

Vanhoef explains that the issue lies with the four handshakes that authenticate a user joining a network. The hacker could trick the protocol by impersonating a genuine user who was already authenticated. They attacker could decipher the unwholesome randomness of codes by reusing nounces and forging packets.








Kenneth White a computer security researcher clarifies that this vulnerability increases risk of attacks because these days an attack can originate from hundreds of feet from a vulnerable device. It used to be thought that Wi-Fi attacks necessarily has to be within close proximity to the target device.


In 2011, several researchers with Vanhoef among them demonstrated that a hacker is able to recover the code used to encrypt a secure Wi-Fi Set up. They decrypted the feature in such devices that users employ for authentication using the push-button on the router or Wi-Fi device.


Tech giant and computer manufacturer Microsoft said it released a patch against this bug on Oct. 10. The company ensures its customers that computers that have downloaded this update are secured against KRACK attacks.


Apple confirmed that its patch is still in beta for its iOS, macOS, and tvOS. Apple said the stable patch will be available to customers to download in a couple of weeks.


Google has ensured its customers too that its aware of the vulnerability and would roll out patch for its affected products. Device manufacturers Aruba, Ubiquiti, and Eero has also released updates for their products.