Well, a security researcher has turned out with a new WiFi hacking technique that makes it quite easier for hackers to crack WiFi passwords of most modern routers.Discovered by the lead developer of the very popular password-cracking tool Hashcat, Jens ‘Atom’ Steube, the new WiFi hack works well explicitly against WPA/WPA2 wireless network protocols with Pairwise Master Key Identifier (PMKID)-based roaming features which was enabled.
The WPA/WPA2 enabled WiFi networks was discovered by Steube while he was analyzing the newly-launched WPA3 security standard.The new WiFi hacking method could potentially allow attackers to recover the Pre-shared Key (PSK) login passwords and allowing them to hack into your Wi-Fi network , eavesdrop on the Internet communications.According to the researcher, the past known WiFi hacking methods require attackers to wait for someone to log into a network and to capture a full 4-way authentication handshake of EAPOL, which is a network port authentication protocol.
How to Hack WiFi Password Using PMKID
Robust Security Network is a protocol for establishing secured communications over an 802.11 wireless network and has PMKID, the main key needed to establish a new connection between a client and an access point.
Step 1 — An attacker can use a tool, like hcxdumptool (v4.2.0 or higher), to request the PMKID from the targeted access point as well as dump the received frame to a file.
$ ./hcxdumptool -o test.pcapng -i wlp39s0f3u4u5 –enable_status
Step 2 — Using the hcxpcaptool tool, the output (in pcapng format) of the frame can be converted into a hash format accepted by Hashcat.
$ ./hcxpcaptool -z test.16800 test.pcapng
Step 3 — Use Hashcat (v4.2.0 or higher) password cracking tool to get the WPA PSK (Pre-Shared Key) password, and Bingo!
$ ./hashcat -m 16800 test.16800 -a 3 -w 3 ‘?l?l?l?l?l?lt!’
That’s the password of the target wireless network, cracking which take time depending on its length and its complexity.This WiFi hack does not work against next-generation wireless security protocol WPA3, since the new protocol is “much harder to attack because of the modern key establishment protocol called “Simultaneous Authentication of Equals” (SAE).”
