breaking eircome wepkey

Secure Communications

Breaking Eircom’s WEP

Mark Cummins, ITB

Eircom are the largest providers of home internet access in the country. Their standard home packages before 2007 included a wireless Netopia router, which uses WEP as its default wireless encryption. This means that you can easily derive the password for the 140,000 customers in Ireland. There’s probably a few within range of you now.

Leaving the weaknesses of the WEP protocol itself aside the main issue is Eircom’s derivation of the WEP keys from the broadcast SSIDs, and the fact that this process has been reverse engineered. Essentially all you need to do is convert the digits of the SSID and append the string “Although your world wonders me, ”

Since the release of how Eircom calculate their keys, several websites and smart phone apps have implemented the method to allow individuals to crack Eircom WEP keys using just the SSID of the networks.

http://s4dd.yore.ma/eircom/ http://www.appbrain.com/app/eircom-wep-key-generator/gooseys.wep.gen http://komplettie.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/eircom-wireless-crack-approved-to-app-store/ http://www.windowsphone.com/en-IE/apps/0514983c-dd49-e011-854c-00237de2db9e

This project is to create your own program that implements the method and allows a user to crack Eircom WEP keys. You can write the program in any language you like; you just need to submit your own well commented source code.

The project has two parts:

1) Allow a user to enter the MAC and output the WEP key (10%)

2) Recreate the MAC from a captured SSID address (5%)

Below is an explanation of the all the steps required:

1. Getting the MAC Address from the SSID

You can either just read the MAC address from the air, as I did with these two examples:

eircom2633 7520: 00-0f-cc-59-b0-9c eircom6046 1214: 00-0f-cc-c2-6d-40

Or you can calculate them from the broadcast SSID. Here’s how:

1.1. Convert the 8-digit octal number to Hexidecimal:

2633 7520 OCT -> HEX = (0x)59b f50

6046 1214 OCT -> HEX = (ox)c26 28c

1.2. XOR the hex result with the first three 8-bit two-digit hex of the Netopia MAC address (00-0f-cc)

XOR (0x59bf50, 0x000fcc) = 0x59b09c XOR (0xc2628c, 0x000fcc) = 0xc26d40

59bf50 010110011011111101010000 000fcc 000000000000111111001100

XOR 010110011011000010011100 = 0x59b09c

1.3. That’s it – you have the MAC Addresseircom2633 7520 = 00-0f-cc-59-b0-9c eircom6046 1214 = 00-0f-cc-c2-6d-40

2. Getting the serial number from the MAC Address

2.1. We know where Netopia serial numbers start from

It’s 0x01000000

2.2. Add this to the last three octals of your MAC address

0x0059B09C + 0x01000000 = 0x0159B09C 0x00c26d40 + 0x01000000 = 0x01c26d40

2.3. Convert this to decimal to get the serial number

0x0159B09C HEX -> DEC = 22655132 0x01c26d40 HEX -> DEC = 29519168

3. Getting the WEP key from the serial number

3.1. Convert serial number to word format

22655132 = “TwoTwoSixFiveFiveOneThreeTwo”

29519168 = “TwoNineFiveOneNineOneSixEight”

3.2. Append the string “Although your world wonders me, “

“TwoTwoSixFiveFiveOneThreeTwo” -> “TwoTwoSixFiveFiveOneThreeTwoAlthough your world wonders me, ”

“TwoNineFiveOneNineOneSixEight” -> “TwoNineFiveOneNineOneSixEightAlthough your world wonders me, ”

3.3. Hash this result with SHA-1

“TwoTwoSixFiveFiveOneThreeTwoAlthough your world wonders me, ” -> 29b2e9560b3a83a187ec5f205788d5420a47aa42 “TwoNineFiveOneNineOneSixEightAlthough your world wonders me, ” -> d9dd7ef5be51a9e199d7df3c93bcf5cac0743d6a

3.4. Seperate the first 26 digits, and there you have your WEP Key!eircom2633 7520 = 29b2e9560b3a83a187ec5f2057

eircom6046 1214 = d9dd7ef5be51a9e199d7df3c93

Incidently, the appended strings are lyrics taken from the song ‘Third Stone from the Sun’ by Jimi Hendrix.

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