Wi-Fi Key-Cracking Kits Now On Sale in China

This is messed up.

Where can I get one?

This is the electronic equivalent of bottled water. You can get cracking software anywhere.

LOL, sure they are needed to get free internet access.

Crap, sometimes it's harder to configure devices not to use the "I am broadcasting my network everywhere, hack me please" configurations seen in your local neighbor hood then it is to use specific ones.

Run over some protesters with tanks, deny basic rights to people, hack other countries' servers, have 1/4 of the economy based on counterfeit goods, steal WiFi.

Hey, China is the ultimate Pirate! I'm sending them an eye patch.

The kits are probably put together, on the cheap, with the left over melamine from the milk, lead from toys, and engine coolant from toothpaste foreigners aren't buying anymore from China...

Lets go wired... Simple solution. Set your router Filter MAC address -> allow only this/these MAC addresses your hardwares currently have. Even if they hack your WEP they still can't access your router.

so they are selling you a free open source Linux distro....

A fool and his money are soon parted. Oh and BTW it doesn't work on WPA2 with AES or Enterprise setups, that requires a more "forceful" approach.

Toms has a moral obligation NOT to publish such articles & give publicity to the thiefs ...

dont you have to be able to ping or to have some kind of network connection to see mac addresses? how can you get a mac to something that does not respond to any other mac ping?

Backtrack is nothing new, we use it in my IT security class all the time. Its great for securing your own network but it can just as easily give you access to others. There is no reason to buy these kits, the software is free...
http://www.backtrack-linux.org/

The time to crack greatly depends on if the network you are trying to crack has a wireless device connected to the network at that time. The exploit relies on obtaining vulnerable packets, which you can generate by causing the device to disassociate/associate with the access point multiple times. If I remember correctly Toms Hardware had an article illustrating this a while back.
Like someone said, who would pay for this, it's like paying for bottled water when there is a free, higher quality water source nearby.

Remember when Tom's posted an article on how to crack WEP keys with the use of a linux machine and 1 or 2 additional laptops?

These "cracking" kits are probably a more "compressed" version of that article by coincidence. Hence "war driving" has been around for a long time.

WEP is already proven to be a security vulnerability. But I'm curious as to the validity of these "cracking kits" and their ability to crack WPA/WPA2.

I know it's 2010 but does the AES encryption standard have a cipher strength that is rated to uncrackable currently. I remember reading a few years ago while studying for my security+ certification that AES is rated to have a cipher strength so high that even a supercomputer would take more than 10 years(possibly more I can't remember) to decrypt the cryptography mechanisms of AES.

I remember my former co-worker telling me of an internet article of an individual claiming to have (what the media appeared to have misinterpreted as) cracked WPA/WPA2. According to my co-worker the individual in question claimed that he did not crack or decrypt the cryptography mechanism but merely used an "exploit"( this person obviously would not disclose his methods)to obtain access to a secure wifi network under wpa/wpa2.

I wonder if it was tom's that covered that as well.

If anything these kits probably utilize an exploit in the WPA/WPA2 mechanism and does not really decrypt or "crack" the cipher strength of WPA/WPA2.

Just my 2 cents worth.

i use a radius based authentication infrastructure. Go ahead hack all you want the keys are managed by the server and they change every 3 hours.

WiFi cracking has been going on as long as there has been WiFi to crack. There have always been various ways to protect your WiFi, but when it gets down to it you can't secure it 100%. I read somewhere one time that they recommend banks and so forth to NOT have WiFi because it cannot be made totally secure.

an hour to crack a wep key? they're not doing something wrong. Now a WPA key with dictionary words I can see taking that long maybe, and figgus is right, they'll just change their mac to match an approved machine, mac filtering is only slightly more useful than disabling SSID broadcast.

I can do that with my laptop within windows for free...

correction

So, two great suggestions for preventing this pulled from the above comments above that I already use: 1) Use WPA2-AES encryption with a nonsensical-not-in-the-dictionary password, and 2) Turn on MAC address filtering. Sure, compatibility with old devices won't always be perfect, and especially with suggestion 2 it's much harder to add new devices to your network. However, you can be almost certain that your data is safe and your internet connection won't be involuntarily "shared".

No one should be using WEP anymore. WAP is crackable in real time IF the passphrase is short and dumb...something like "sugar". WPA is considered secure with non-dictionary keys longer than 20 characters. As of today, WPA2 is uncrackable in real time. Theoretically WPA2 could I guess be cracked offline. Encrypted packets could be captured out of the air and brute-forced. If someone is that determined to gain access to your network you have some pretty issues above someone trying to hack your network I think.

The people selling these are performing a public service. Anyone stupid enough to still be using WEP deserves to have people ripping off their WiFi -- just like those who run unsecured.

If you don't know the differences between WEP/WPA/WPA2, you shouldn't be running WiFi. There is no excuse for ignorance. If you drive a car, you know to lock it. No difference here.

As was said before the Chinese are the ultimate pirates. It wouldn't surprise me if they put in something of their own to gain access to everyone's computer who uses this device.