📡 Can you crack this legacy WEP encryption in minutes?

🔓 Master the techniques that made WEP obsolete and understand why legacy protocols fail
⚡ Learn how statistical attacks can break encryption with sufficient data samples
🛡️ Discover the cryptographic flaws that led to WPA development
🎯 Develop skills to identify and exploit weak wireless security implementations

Flags

Points

Daily Challenge

Solution Available

Pro Exclusive

Start Lab Environment

~1-2 min setup

AWS dedicated

Private instance

Industry standard

Daily Challenge

📡 WEP Cracker - Complete Solution

Objective: Use aircrack-ng to crack the WEP encryption and recover the network key from the provided packet capture.

🔍 Step 1: Download the Challenge Files

Download the WEP packet capture from the challenge:

wget https://lab.hdna.me/107-wep-cracker/wep_64_ptw.cap

Verify the file format:

file wep_64_ptw.cap
ls -lh wep_64_ptw.cap

🔍 Step 2: Run Aircrack-ng

Execute the WEP cracking attack:

aircrack-ng wep_64_ptw.cap

🔍 Step 3: Analyze the Output

Aircrack-ng will display the cracking progress and results:

Aircrack-ng 1.7

[00:00:00] Tested 1514 keys (got 30566 IVs)

KB    depth   byte(vote)
 0    0/  9   1F(39680) 4E(38400) 14(37376)...
 1    5/  9   08(36864) A1(36608) A3(36608)...
 2    0/  1   1F(46592) 6E(38400) 81(37376)...
 3    0/  3   1F(40960) 15(38656) 7B(38400)...
 4    0/  7   1F(39168) 23(38144) 97(37120)...

KEY FOUND! [ 1F:1F:1F:1F:1F ]
Decrypted correctly: 100%

🔍 Step 4: Extract the Flag

The recovered WEP key is the challenge flag:

Flag: 1F:1F:1F:1F:1F

Key Points:

Submit the key exactly as displayed by aircrack-ng
Format: 5 hex bytes separated by colons
This represents a 40-bit (5-byte) WEP key
The attack succeeded due to sufficient IVs (30,566+)

🔍 Step 5: Understanding the Attack

This challenge demonstrates real WEP vulnerabilities:

RC4 Weaknesses: Statistical biases in the key scheduling algorithm
IV Analysis: Initialization vectors leak key information
PTW Attack: Efficient statistical recovery method
Rapid Cracking: Modern tools break WEP in seconds

Security Lesson: WEP is fundamentally broken and should never be used. This challenge shows why WPA2/WPA3 were necessary replacements.

Labs / WEP Cracker