How Hackers Crack WiFi Passwords (and How to Protect Your Network)

Want to learn how to hack a WiFi password or, in our case, protect yourself from WiFi hacking then here are the steps hackers use to crack your wifi password

If you need a cybersecurity consulting company to help secure your wifi, reach out to LME Services

First things first, what the heck is going on with WiFi security these days..?!

WPA and WPA2 Wifi Has Many Security Issues

There have been some well-known security flaws for WPA for quite some time, so if you use WPA for your wireless then shame on you. The somewhat new news is that WPA2 is so full of holes.

how hackers crack wifi passwords - cybersecurity protection

Jens ‘Atom’ Steube, a security researcher, recently revealed that a new WiFi hacking technique has made it much simpler for hackers to crack the WiFi passwords of most modern routers.

The attack focuses on the EAPOL protocol and is pretty much a fundamental flaw within the WPA and WPA2 protocol (which is what pretty much everyone uses).

How the Attack Actually Works

Using the hcxdumptool hackers can run a request of PMKID against a targeted access point and then dump that received frame to a file

2. That HCX output can then be converted into a hash format

3. Using Hashcat (a password cracking tool) on that HCX output file you can see the WPA PSK password

I’m not going to go into grizzly detail on commands and run screenshots as this is just a fundamental overview of how easy it is for those with the will and know-how to get your wireless password (of note is that the cracking of wifi can depend on password length and complexity).

For more IT consulting services assistance click here.

Looking for a Cybersecurity Consulting Company, check us out

What can I do to protect my Wi-Fi from hackers

Since the new WiFi hack only works via brute force (repeatedly trying different passwords until they guess correctly), users are recommended to protect their WiFi with as secure of passwords as possible (the longer and more random the better).

You can also try and hide your SSID so that people won’t know that you have wireless (although hidden networks can still be found).

The route I most recommended is to jump to the next generation of wireless security as soon as possible, and that my friends means buying a wireless device that has WPA3 security as there are no known flaws to WPA3

Now you know how the attack works — and how to make sure it never works on your network.

Securing your wireless network the right way is exactly the kind of cybersecurity work our team handles for Chicagoland businesses.

Contact LME Services and We Will Fix This For You

How Hackers Crack WiFi Passwords (and How to Protect Your Network)