The popular expert Jens ‘Atom’ Steube devised a new WiFi hack that allows cracking WiFi passwords of most modern routers.

Jens ‘Atom’ Steube, the lead developer of the popular password-cracking tool Hashcat, has developed a new WiFi hacking technique that allows cracking WiFi passwords of most modern routers.

Jens ‘Atom’ Steube, the lead developer of the popular password-cracking tool Hashcat, has developed a new WiFi hacking technique that allows cracking WiFi passwords of most modern routers.

The attack technique works against WPA/WPA2 wireless network protocols with Pairwise Master Key Identifier (PMKID)-based roaming features enabled.

Steube discovered the attack while he was analyzing the WPA3 security standard.

The technique allows an attacker to recover the Pre-shared Key (PSK) login passwords and use them to hack into your Wi-Fi network and eavesdrop on the Internet traffic.



Unlike other WiFi hacking techniques, this attack doesn’t require the capture of a full 4-way authentication handshake of EAPOL.

Instead, the new WiFi hack is performed on the RSN IE (Robust Security Network Information Element) using a single EAPOL (Extensible Authentication Protocol over LAN) frame after requesting it from the access point.

“This attack was discovered accidentally while looking for new ways to attack the new WPA3 security standard. WPA3 will be much harder to attack because of its modern key establishment protocol called “Simultaneous Authentication of Equals” (SAE).”



“The main difference from existing attacks is that in this attack, capture of a full EAPOL 4-way handshake is not required. The new attack is performed on the RSN IE (Robust Security Network Information Element) of a single EAPOL frame”

The Robust Security Network protocol allows establishing secure communications over an 802.11 wireless network. It uses the PMKID key to establish a connection between a client and an access point.

Below the attack step by step:



Step 1 — Run hcxdumptool to request the PMKID from the Access Point and to dump the received frame to a file (in pcapng format).



$ ./hcxdumptool -o test.pcapng -i wlp39s0f3u4u5 –enable_status

Step 2 — Run hcxpcaptool tool to convert the captured data from pcapng format to a hash format that is accepted by Hashcat.



$ ./hcxpcaptool -z test.16800 test.pcapng

Step 3 — Launch the Hashcat (v4.2.0 or higher) password cracking tool and crack it. The hash-mode that we need to use is 16800.



$ ./hashcat -m 16800 test.16800 -a 3 -w 3 ‘?l?l?l?l?l?lt!’

In this way it is possible to retrieve the password of the target WiFi networt .

“At this time, we do not know for which vendors or for how many routers this technique will work, but we think it will work against all 802.11i/p/q/r networks with roaming functions enabled (most modern routers).”

Steube concludes.

“The main advantages of this attack are as follow:



No more regular users required – because the attacker directly communicates with the AP (aka “client-less” attack)



No more waiting for a complete 4-way handshake between the regular user and the AP



No more eventual retransmissions of EAPOL frames (which can lead to uncrackable results)



No more eventual invalid passwords sent by the regular user



No more lost EAPOL frames when the regular user or the AP is too far away from the attacker



No more fixing of nonce and replaycounter values required (resulting in slightly higher speeds)



values required (resulting in slightly higher speeds) No more special output format ( pcap , hccapx , etc.) – final data will appear as regular hex encoded string”.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – WiFi hack, hacking)

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