Doh! First serious crack in WPA encryption appears

Researchers claim that they managed to crack WPA Wi-Fi encryption in about 15 minutes, and they plan to show the world how they did it next week. Better get your WPA2 encryption settings warmed up.

Up to now, the only real way to crack WPA was through a "dictionary" attack—a time-consuming, brute-force method that calls for plowing through an "extremely large number" of permutations to find the right encryption key, PC World notes.

But according to the PC World story, researchers Erik Twes and Martin Beck say they've developed a "mathematical breakthrough" that helped them crack WPA encryption in just 12 and 15 minutes. The researchers say they'll divulge more details next week at a conference in Tokyo and in a report later this month.

Now, we're only talking a partial hack here, according to PC World, which notes that the new attack only compromises data sent from a router to a laptop, not the other way around.

Still, the attack—partial though it is—could well mark the beginning of the end for WPA as a reliable Wi-Fi security measure.

So, what to do? For now, most casual Wi-Fi users are probably fine sticking with WPA for now—hey, it's still far more secure than WEP encryption, which is crackable in just a matter of seconds.

But if you're more serious about wireless security, consider bumping your router encryption up to the next line of defense: WPA2, which (according to PC World) is still safe from the new attack. The only downside: Not all wireless devices (such as phones, gaming consoles, and the like) support WPA2 encryption, so you'll have to weigh your paranoia against the potential inconvenience.

Related:
Once Thought Safe, WPA Wi-Fi Encryption Is Cracked [PC World]