Wi-Fi Protected Setup

For other uses, see Wi-Fi positioning system and WPS.
The WPS push button (center, blue) on a wireless router showing the symbol defined by the Wi-Fi Alliance for this function.

Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS; originally Wi-Fi Simple Config) is a network security standard that attempts to allow users to easily secure a wireless home network but could fall to brute-force attacks if one or more of the network's access points do not guard against the attack.[1][2]

Created by the Wi-Fi Alliance and introduced in 2006, the goal of the protocol is to allow home users who know little of wireless security and may be intimidated by the available security options to set up Wi-Fi Protected Access, as well as making it easy to add new devices to an existing network without entering long passphrases. Prior to the standard, several competing solutions were developed by different vendors to address the same need.[3]

A major security flaw was revealed in December 2011 that affects wireless routers with the WPS PIN feature, which most recent models have enabled by default. The flaw allows a remote attacker to recover the WPS PIN in a few hours with a brute-force attack and, with the WPS PIN, the network's WPA/WPA2 pre-shared key.[4] Users have been urged to turn off the WPS PIN feature,[5] although this may not be possible on some router models.[6]

Methods

The standard emphasizes usability and security, and allows up to four usage modes aimed at a home network user adding a new device to the network:

The last two modes are usually referred to as out-of-band methods as there is a transfer of information by a channel other than the Wi-Fi channel itself. Only the first two modes are currently covered by the WPS certification. The USB method has been deprecated and is not part of the Alliance's certification testing.

A few wireless access points have a dual-function WPS button, so pressing this button for too long can initiate a factory reset of the wireless access point.

Technical architecture

The WPS protocol defines three types of devices in a network:

The WPS standard defines three basic scenarios that involve components listed above:

AP with integrated registrar capabilities configures an Enrollee Station (STA)
In this case, the session will run on the wireless medium as a series of EAP request/response messages, ending with the AP disassociating from the STA and waiting for the STA to reconnect with its new configuration (handed to it by the AP just before).
Registrar STA configures the AP as an enrollee
This case is subdivided in two aspects: first, the session could occur on either a wired or wireless medium; and second, the AP could already be configured by the time the registrar found it. In the case of a wired connection between the devices, the protocol runs over Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), and both devices will have to support UPnP for that purpose. When running over UPnP, a shortened version of the protocol is run (only two messages) as no authentication is required other than that of the joined wired medium. In the case of a wireless medium, the session of the protocol is very similar to the internal registrar scenario, but with opposite roles. As to the configuration state of the AP, the registrar is expected to ask the user whether to reconfigure the AP or keep its current settings, and can decide to reconfigure it even if the AP describes itself as configured. Multiple registrars should have the ability to connect to the AP. UPnP is intended to apply only to a wired medium, while actually it applies to any interface to which an IP connection can be set up. Thus, having manually set up a wireless connection, the UPnP can be used over it in the same manner as with the wired connection.
Registrar STA configures enrollee STA
In this case the AP stands in the middle and acts as an authenticator, meaning it only proxies the relevant messages from side to side.

Protocol

The WPS protocol consists of a series of EAP message exchanges that are triggered by a user action, relying on an exchange of descriptive information that should precede that user's action. The descriptive information is transferred through a new Information Element (IE) that is added to the beacon, probe response, and optionally to the probe request and association request/response messages. Other than purely informative type-length-values, those IEs will also hold the possible and the currently deployed configuration methods of the device.

After this communication of the device capabilities from both ends, the user initiates the actual protocol session. The session consists of eight messages that are followed, in the case of a successful session, by a message to indicate that the protocol is completed. The exact stream of messages may change when configuring different kinds of devices (AP or STA), or when using different physical media (wired or wireless).

Band or radio selection

Some devices with dual-band wireless network connectivity do not allow the user to select the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band (or even a particular radio or SSID) when using Wi-Fi Protected Setup, unless the wireless access point has separate WPS buttons for each band or radio.

Vulnerabilities

Brute-force attack

In December 2011, researcher Stefan Viehböck reported a design and implementation flaw that makes brute-force attacks against PIN-based WPS feasible to be performed on WPS-enabled Wi-Fi networks. A successful attack on WPS allows unauthorized parties to gain access to the network, and the only effective workaround is to disable WPS.[5] The vulnerability centers around the acknowledgement messages sent between the registrar and enrollee when attempting to validate a PIN, which is an eight-digit number used to add new WPA enrollees to the network. Since the last digit is a checksum of the previous digits,[9] there are seven unknown digits in each PIN, yielding 107 = 10,000,000 possible combinations.

When an enrollee attempts to gain access using a PIN, the registrar reports the validity of the first and second halves of the PIN separately. Since the first half of the pin consists of four digits (10,000 possibilities) and the second half has only three active digits (1000 possibilities), at most 11,000 guesses are needed before the PIN is recovered. This is a reduction by three orders of magnitude from the number of PINs that would be required to be tested. As a result, an attack can be completed in under four hours. The ease or difficulty of exploiting this flaw is implementation-dependent, as Wi-Fi router manufacturers could defend against such attacks by slowing or disabling the WPS feature after several failed PIN validation attempts.[4] Unfortunately, some devices can also be more prone to attack; in August 2014, researchers found that several devices used weak randomization in keys used to authenticate the WPS PIN.[10] An attack against these devices requires only a single guess instead of 11,000, but has to be followed by a series of offline calculations.

A tool has been developed in order to show that the attack is practically doable.[11][12] The firm that released the tool, Tactical Network Solutions in Maryland, says that it has known about the vulnerability since early 2011 and has been using it.[13]

In some devices, disabling WPS in the user interface does not result in the feature actually being disabled, and the device remains vulnerable to this attack.[6] Firmware updates have been released for some of these devices so that WPS can be disabled completely. Vendors could also patch the vulnerability by adding a lock-down period if the Wi-Fi access point detects a brute-force attack in progress, which disables the PIN method for long enough to make the attack impractical.[2]

Physical security issues

All WPS methods are vulnerable to usage by an unauthorized user if the wireless access point is not kept in a secure area. Many wireless access points have security information (if it is factory-secured) and the WPS PIN printed on them; this PIN is also often found in the configuration menus of the wireless access point. If this PIN cannot be changed or disabled, the only remedy is to get a firmware update to enable the PIN to be changed, or to replace the wireless access point.

It is possible to extract a wireless passphrase with the following methods using no special tools:[14]

Keeping wireless access points that are factory-secured or support WPS in a physically secure area, or under video surveillance, should improve the security.

References

  1. ↑ Walker-Morgan, Dj (2011-12-29). "Wi-Fi Protected Setup made easier to brute force". The H. Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Slavin, Brad (January 18, 2013). "Wi-Fi Security – The Rise and Fall of WPS". Netstumbler.com. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  3. ↑ Tim Higgins (2008-03-13). "How is WPS supposed to work?". Pudai LLC. Retrieved 2012-01-02.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Viehböck, Stefan (2011-12-26). "Brute forcing Wi-Fi Protected Setup" (PDF). Retrieved 2011-12-30.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Allar, Jared (2011-12-27). "Vulnerability Note VU#723755 - WiFi Protected Setup PIN brute force vulnerability". Vulnerability Notes Database. US CERT. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Gallagher, Sean (2012-01-04). "Hands-on: hacking WiFi Protected Setup with Reaver". Condé Nast Digital. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
  7. ↑ P2P Spec 1.2, clause 3.1.4.3
  8. ↑ P2P Spec 1.2, clause 3.1.4.3
  9. ↑ "Windows Connect Now–NET (WCN-NET) Specifications". Microsoft Corporation. 2006-12-08. Retrieved 2011-12-30.
  10. ↑ Lemos, Robert (2015-08-30). "Offline attack shows Wi-Fi routers still vulnerable". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 2015-02-01.
  11. ↑ "reaver-wps". Retrieved 2011-12-30.
  12. ↑ "Reaver demonstration on WPS - proof of concept".
  13. ↑ Dennis Fisher (2011-12-29). "Attack Tool Released for WPS PIN Vulnerability". Retrieved 2011-12-31. This is a capability that we at TNS have been testing, perfecting and using for nearly a year.
  14. ↑ Cherry, Bryce. An Emphasis On Physical Security for Wireless Networks AKA The Dangers Of Wi-Fi Protected Setup http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRhyvRAUG6k Retrieved 2014-7-14

External links