KRACK Wi-Fi flaw: Here’s all you need to know to stay protected

A new flaw has been discovered in the widely used Wi-Fi encryption protocol WAP2. This flaw might leave you vulnerable to Wi-Fi attacks as the attackers can eavesdrop on your data whenever you are connected to Wi-Fi.

This vulnerability is dubbed KRACK and it is said to affect the WAP2 Wi-Fi protocol and not be specific to any product or implementations and works against all the modern protected Wi-Fi networks too, claims Mathy Vanhoef, a researcher who discovered it. According to him, KRACK will have an impact on your system if it is connected to Wi-Fi.

What is KRACK vulnerability?

KRACK (Key Reinstallation AttaCK) targets the third step in the four-way authentication handshake that is performed when your Wi-Fi client device tries to connect to a protected Wi-Fi network. The encryption key can be resent several times during the third step, then the attackers can collect and replay the retransmissions in specific ways and break the Wi-Fi security encryption. You can get to know more details regarding the same on the KRACK attacks website of Mathy Vanhoef.

Whatever device you use, if it uses Wi-Fi, then it is likely to be vulnerable to the KRACK Wi-Fi flaw. However, some devices might be at a high risk than the others.

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When the Wi-Fi security encryption of your device is broken, the attack can eavesdrop on all the data that you send and receive over the network. Apparently, your sensitive information including credit card numbers, passwords, emails, chat messages, photos, etc. can be spied upon.

How to stay protected from KRACK Wi-Fi flaw?

In order to keep your device protected from the KRACK Wi-Fi flaw, Vanhoef says that you need to keep your devices up to date. He notes that the implementations can be patched in a backward-compatible manner. This means that your device can be updated to stay protected against KRACK but it can communicate with any other hardware that is unpatched while it is being protected from the security flaw. Until there is a widespread awareness about the Wi-Fi flaw and everyone takes the step to safeguard their devices against KRACK, you need to avoid using Wi-Fi and rely on a wired ethernet connection or your mobile data.

Which devices are at risk?

Though any device that sends and receives data over Wi-Fi network is at risk, the researchers claim that the Android devices are at a higher risk than the rest. Unfortunately, those new Android phones running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or later are actually at a higher risk.

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Apple has released a statement that the current iOS, watchOS, macOS and tvOS beta updates include a fix for the KRACK Wi-Fi flaw. The same is the case with Microsoft told Windows Central that they rolled out a patch on October 10 to protect the Windows 10 PCs against KRACK even before the existence of the vulnerability came to light.