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Alert - Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) Handshake Vulnerabilities

Number: AL17-012
Date: 16 October 2017

Purpose

The purpose of this alert is to bring attention to multiple critical vulnerabilities in WPA2, a protocol that secures all modern protected Wi-Fi networks.

Assessment

CCIRC has become aware of multiple critical vulnerabilities in WPA2 handshake traffic. These vulnerabilities can be manipulated to induce nonce and session key reuse which could result in key reinstallation by a wireless access point or client. This could then enable arbitrary packet decryption and injection, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection, or the replay of unicast, broadcast, and multicast frames.

As these vulnerabilities are in the Wi-Fi standard, they are not related to individual products or their implementation. However, the correct implementation of the WPA2 protocol is likely affected.

The WPA2 protocol is affected by the following vulnerabilities:

  • CVE-2017-13077: Reinstallation of the pairwise encryption key (PTK-TK) in the 4-way handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13078: Reinstallation of the group key (GTK) in the 4-way handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13079: Reinstallation of the integrity group key (IGTK) in the 4-way handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13080: Reinstallation of the group key (GTK) in the group key handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13081: Reinstallation of the integrity group key (IGTK) in the group key handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13082: Accepting a retransmitted Fast BSS Transition (FT) Reassociation Request and reinstalling the pairwise encryption key (PTK-TK) while processing it.
  • CVE-2017-13084: Reinstallation of the STK key in the PeerKey handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13086: Reinstallation of the Tunneled Direct-Link Setup (TDLS) PeerKey (TPK) key in the TDLS handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13087: Reinstallation of the group key (GTK) when processing a Wireless Network Management (WNM) Sleep Mode Response frame.
  • CVE-2017-13088: Reinstallation of the integrity group key (IGTK) when processing a Wireless Network management (WNM) Sleep Mode Response frame

Suggested action

CCIRC recommends that network administrators install updates to affected products as they become available and to consult the vendor for specific risk mitigation advice.

References

https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/228519
https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/ccs2017.pdf
https://www.krackattacks.com

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