WPA/WPA2 architecture
In this chapter, we will discuss both WPA and WPA2 in similar terms, mostly because the methods for recovering the network key (also known as a PSK) for these networks are the same for both WPA and WPA2.
Important note
The techniques in this chapter focus on the recovery of the PSK, which is only used for WPA/WPA2 Personal Mode networks, not Enterprise Mode deployments, which use true authentication, not shared secrets, to authenticate devices/users to the network.
WPA and WPA2 differ in the number of keys and encryption algorithms used to protect data. Most of the remaining processes involved in WPA and WPA2 networks are the same. WPA was designed as a drop-in standard to replace WEP, which needed to use the same algorithm as WEP (RC4) due to the computing power of the day. WPA2 was released approximately 5 years later and replaced RC4 with AES for encryption. In both cases, the device is authenticated to the network via knowledge of a PSK that is the...
