May 12 2021

WiFi devices going back to 1997 vulnerable to new Frag Attack

Category: Wi-Fi SecurityDISC @ 10:04 am
WiFi devices going back to 1997 vulnerable to new Frag Attacks | The Record  by Recorded Future

Source: WiFi devices going back to 1997 vulnerable to new Frag Attack

A Belgian security researcher has discovered a series of vulnerabilities that impact the WiFi standard, with some bugs dating back as far back as 1997 and affecting devices sold for the past 24 years.

The vulnerabilities, known as Frag Attacks, allow an attacker within a device’s WiFi radio range to gather information about the owner and run malicious code to compromise a device, may it be a computer, smartphone, or other smart device.

Devices are also vulnerable even if the WiFi standard’s security protocols were activated, such as WEP and WPA.

Design flaws in the WiFi standard itself

“Three of the discovered vulnerabilities are design flaws in the WiFi standard and therefore affect most devices,” said Mathy Vanhoef, the Belgian academic and security researcher who found the Frag Attacks.

The rest are vulnerabilities caused “by widespread programming mistakes [in the implementation of the WiFi standard] in WiFi products,” Vanhoef said.

“Experiments indicate that every WiFi product is affected by at least one vulnerability and that most products are affected by several vulnerabilities,” said Vanhoef, who is also scheduled to give an in-depth talk about his findings later this year in August at the USENIX ’21 security conference.

“The discovery of these vulnerabilities comes as a surprise because the security of WiFi has in fact significantly improved over the past years,” the Belgian researcher said.

Prior to disclosing the Frag Attacks today, Vanhoef previously discovered the KRACK and Dragonblood attacks. Vanhoef’s previous findings have helped the WiFi standard improve its security posture, but his latest findings reside in older sections of the WiFi protocol, not improved by his previous discoveries, and already deployed with devices in the real world for decades.

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