PSIRTNew WiFi hack against WPA/WPA2 when PMKID based roaming enabled
Summary
Makers of popular WiFi hacking tool hashcat have discovered a way to improve password brute-forcing of the WPA/WPA2 wifi network security standards. By leveraging the PMKID served by access points in WPA/WPA2 enabled WiFi networks, attackers gain knowledge of a pre-shared key hash, which can be used to brute-force the WPA/WPA2 password.
This, however, requires a set of conditions to work:
o WPA/WPA2 must be "Personal security (Pre-shared Key)". Other types (eg: Enterprise) are not vulnerable
o The PMKID must be included in the first EAPOL message of the 4 way handshake
o 802.11r and PMKID caching must be enabled
Affected Products
FortiOS supports WPA/WPA2 WiFi and is only affected under special configurations [1]
FortiAP supports WPA/WPA2 WiFi and is only affected under special configurations [1]
[1] When 802.11r/fast-bss-transition is enabled and security is set to wpa2-only-personal.
Solutions
Since this is a protocol level attack facilitating brute-force cracking, there exists mitigation to disable it altogether, or drastically lower its practical feasibility:
1. When enabling the 801.11r/fast-bss-transition feature on FortiOS/FortiAP, avoid using wpa2-only-personal security, and use wpa2-only-enterprise instead. This effectively prevents the attack completely.
2. If the above is not acceptable given the environment, a minimum of 12 high-entropy random ASCII characters should be used as the password (with 20 characters being preferable). This renders the attack unpractical in the current state of computing power available for brute-force cracking.
Starting with FortiOS 6.2.1, the following CLI commands (for pre-shared key for WPA/WPA2-Personal SSID) will ask to input at least 12 bytes in length when editing the [vap-name] if the existing passphrase is shorter than 12 bytes:
config wireless-controller vap
edit [vap-name]
set passphrase [psk] / minimum 12 bytes psk when wfa-compatibility is disabled [1] /
next
end
[1] To compatible with WPA3™-SAE Test Plan Version 1.0, a new CLI were introduced at same time to allow minimum 8 bytes pre-shared key which the default value is disabled (enable is not suggested in production environment).
config wireless-controller setting
set wfa-compatibility enable / disable is the default value /
end
Starting from FortiOS 6.2.3, the minimum psk length reverted back to 8 bytes to restore the usability. The wfa-compatibility CLI command will no longer control that size.
Revision History:
09-10-2018 Initial version
06-18-2019 pre-shared key length for WPA/WPA2 personal SSID by default needs at least 12 bytes
01-27-2020 Minimum pre-shared key length reverted back to 8 bytes start from FortiOS 6.2.3