AirSnort

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AirSnort
AirSnort (Linux)
Developed by	Blake Hegerle and Jeremy Bruestle
Latest release	0.2.7e / January 10, 2005
OS	Cross-platform
Genre	WEP encryption key recovery
License	GPL
Website	airsnort.shmoo.com

AirSnort is a Linux utility (using GTK+) for decrypting WEP encryption on an 802.11b network. A Windows port also exists. Distributed under the GNU General Public License,^[1] AirSnort is free software.

Scott Fluhrer, Itsik Mantin and Adi Shamir (who was one of the inventors of the RSA encryption algorithm) released a paper entitled Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4. In August 2001, based on the security flaws described therein, Blake Hegerle and Jeremy Bruestle made public a tool that must gather roughly five to ten million encrypted packets from a wireless access point before it can attempt to recover the wireless key. Depending on the environment, this can take as little as a few minutes or more commonly a few hours and possibly a few days.