Hacked Wi-Fi security: WEP is dead

German researchers have developed an attack on the WEP security protocol used in Wi-Fi networks that has a 95 percent chance of decrypting the key in less than two minutes.

When WEP was first hacked in 2001, more than five million packets were still needed to obtain the key. Three years ago, a hacker named KoreK released a new attack. This solution, called "chopper" (helicopter), has reduced the number of packages required by an order of magnitude. Recently, three PhD students at Darmstadt University of Technology reported an attack in which only 85 packages were enough to hack WEP with a 95 percent probability.

The German group has proved that after processing 40 packages, 50, after 85 packages, they can get the key with 95 percent probability. This means that a Wi-Fi network can be hacked in less than two minutes.
Nowadays, WEP is usually implemented with 40/64 and 104/128 bit keys. There are vendors that work with a 232/256-bit key, but that doesn’t help either, as the researchers said, with some improvements, WEP512 isn’t an obstacle for them either. They simply say: WEP is dead.