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keywords=FragAttacks, Wi-Fi, WiFi, WPA2, WPA2, Fragmentation, Aggregation, Design, Implementation, Vulnerability, Flaw, EAPOL, A-MSDU, Implementation, Mathy, Vanhoef;
description=We present three security design flaws in Wi-Fi and widepread implementation flaws. These can be abused to exfiltrate user data and attack local devices.;

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an be fixed in a backwards compatible manner by removing fragments from memory whenever disconnecting or re connecting to a network other implementation vulnerabilities some routers will forward handshake frames to another client even when the sender hasn t authenticated yet this vulnerability allows an adversary to perform the aggregation attack and inject arbitrary frames without user interaction another extremely common implementation flaw is that receivers do not check whether all fragments belong to the same frame meaning an adversary can trivially forge frames by mixing the fragments of two different frames additionally against several implementations it is possible to mix encrypted and plaintext fragments finally some devices don t support fragmentation or aggregation but are still vulnerable to attacks because they process fragmented frames as full frames under the right circumstances this can be abused to inject packets assigned cve identifiers an overview of all assigned common vulnerabilities and exposures cve identifiers can be found on github and there is a list of known advisories from companies summarized the design flaws were assigned the following cves cve 2020 24588 aggregation attack accepting non spp a msdu frames cve 2020 24587 mixed key attack reassembling fragments encrypted under different keys cve 2020 24586 fragment cache attack not clearing fragments from memory when re connecting to a network implementation vulnerabilities that allow the trivial injection of plaintext frames in a protected wi fi network are assigned the following cves cve 2020 26145 accepting plaintext broadcast fragments as full frames in an encrypted network cve 2020 26144 accepting plaintext a msdu frames that start with an rfc1042 header with ethertype eapol in an encrypted network cve 2020 26140 accepting plaintext data frames in a protected network cve 2020 26143 accepting fragmented plaintext data frames in a protected network other implementation flaws are assigned the following cves cve 2020 26139 forwarding eapol frames even though the sender is not yet authenticated should only affect aps cve 2020 26146 reassembling encrypted fragments with non consecutive packet numbers cve 2020 26147 reassembling mixed encrypted plaintext fragments cve 2020 26142 processing fragmented frames as full frames cve 2020 26141 not verifying the tkip mic of fragmented frames for each implementation vulnerability we listed the reference cve identifier although each affected codebase normally receives a unique cve the agreement between affected vendors was that in this specific case using the same cve across different codebases would make communication easier for instance by tying one cve to each vulnerability a customer can now ask a vendor whether their product is affected by a specific cve please note that this deviates from normal mitre guidelines and that this decision was made by affected vendors independently of mitre and that this in no way reflects any changes in how mitre assigns cves paper our paper behind the attack is titled fragment and forge breaking wi fi through frame aggregation and fragmentation and was presented at usenix security you can use the following bibtex entry to cite our paper inproceedings vanhoef usenix2021 fragattacks author mathy vanhoef title fragment and forge breaking wi fi through frame aggregation and fragmentation booktitle proceedings of the 30th usenix security symposium year 2021 month august publisher usenix association paper clarifications in the paper in section 6 regarding implementation vulnerabilities when a tested device accepts plaintext frames it will also accepted fragmented plaintext frames table 1 2 and 3 usenix security presentation the pre recorded presentation made for usenix security can already be viewed online note that the target audience of this presentation are academics and it professionals workshop on attacks on cryptography presentation a longer presentation that covers more details is the one that i gave at the wac4 workshop extra documents an overview of all attacks and their preconditions it also contains two extra examples on how an adversary can 1 abuse packet injection vulnerabilities to make a victim use a malicious dns and 2 how packet injection can be abused to bypass the nat firewall of a router slides illustrating how the aggregation attack cve 2020 24588 works in practice performing this attack requires tricking the victim into connecting to the adversary s server this can be done by making the victim download an image from the adversary s server note that javascript code execution on the victim is not required detailed slides giving an in depth explanation of each discovered vulnerability overview slides illustrating only the root cause of each discovered vulnerability tools a tool was made that can test if clients or aps are affected by the discovered design and implementations flaws it can test home networks and enterprise networks where authentication is done using e g peap mschapv2 or eap tls the tool supports over 45 test cases and requires modified drivers in order to reliable test for the discovered vulnerabilities without modified drivers one may wrongly conclude that a device is not affected while in reality it is a live usb image is also available this image contains pre installed modified drivers modified firmware for certain atheros usb dongles and a pre configured python environment for the tool using a live image is useful when you cannot install the modified drivers natively and using a virtual machine can be unreliable for some network cards apart from a tool to test if a device is vulnerable i also made proof of concepts to exploit weaknesses because not all devices currently have received updates these attacks scripts will be released at a later point if deemed useful q a how can i contact you are you looking for phd students can i reuse the images on this website why did nobody notice the aggregation design flaw before why was the defense against the aggregation attack cve 2020 24588 not adopted my device isn t patched yet what can i do does using eap tls increase the difficulty of attacks does using 802 11w help mitigate attacks why is wi fi security important we already have https will using a vpn prevent attacks how did you discover this how sure are you that all wi fi devices are affected does this mean every wi fi device is trivial to attack how many networks use fragmentation how many networks periodically refresh the pairwise session key isn t it irresponsible to release tools to perform the attacks where are all the attack tools do you have example network captures of the vulnerabilities how long will you maintain the driver patches needed to run the test scripts why are so many implementations vulnerable to be non consecutive pn attack why are so many implementations vulnerable to the mixed plaintext encrypted fragment attack can an implementation be vulnerable to a cache attack without being vulnerable to a mixed key attack can the mixed key attack be prevented in a backward compatible manner is the old wpa tkip protocol also affected by the design flaws is the ancient wep protocol also affected by the design flaws can fragmentation attacks be preventing by disallowing small delays between fragments are patches for linux available did others also discover the plaintext injection issue cve 2020 26140 why do you use the same cve for implementation issues in multiple different codebases why was the embargo so long how did you monitor for leaks during the embargo are these vulnerabilities being exploited in practice why did microsoft already fix certain vulnerabilities on march 9 2021 is the treating fragments as full frames flaw cve 2020 26142 also applicable to aps can aps be vulnerable to attacks that send broadcast frames why are some of the tested devices so old how did you make macos switch to the malicious dns server in the demonstration isn t nyu edu using hsts to prevent these kind of attacks how do i reproduce the bluekeep attack shown in the demonstration how can i contact you you can reach mathy vanhoef on twitter at vanhoefm or by emailing mathy vanhoef are you looking for phd students see ku leuven s distrinet website for open positions you can also directly contact us with spontaneous applications if you want to do network research at new york university abu dhabi in the cyber security privacy csp team where the fragattacks research was carried out you can contact christina pöpper can i reuse the images on this website yes you can use the logo illustrations of the aggregation design flaw mobile version illustrations of the mixed key design flaw mobile version and illustrations of the fragment cache design flaw mobile version thanks goes to darlee urbiztondo for designing the logo why did nobody notice the aggregation design flaw before when the 802 11n amendment was being written in 2007 which introduced supported for aggregated a msdu frames several ieee members noticed that the is aggregated flag was not authenticated unfortunately many products already implemented a draft of the 802 11n amendment meaning this problem had to be addressed in a backwards compatible manner the decision was made that devices would advertise whether they are capable of authenticating the is aggregated flag only when devices implement and advertise this capability is the is aggregated flag protected unfortunately in 2020 not a single tested device supported this capability likely because it was considered hard to exploit to quote a remark made back in 2007 while it is hard to see how this can be exploited it is clearly a flaw that is capable of being fixed in other words people did notice this vulnerability and a defense was standardized but in practice the defense was never adopted this is a good example that security defenses must be adopted before attacks become practical why was the defense against the aggregation attack cve 2020 24588 not adopted likely because it was only considered a theoretic vulnerability when the defense was created to quote a remark made back in 2007 while it is hard to see how this can be exploited it is clearly a flaw that is capable of being fixed additionally the threat model that was used in the aggregation attack were the victim is induced into connecting to the adversary s server only become widely accepted in 2011 after the disclosure of the beast attack in other words the threat model was not yet widely known back in 2007 when the ieee added the optional feature that would have prevented the attack and even after this threat model became more common the resulting attack isn t obvious my device isn t patched yet what can i do first it s always good to remember general security best practices update your devices don t reuse your passwords make sure you have backups of important data don t visit shady websites and so on in regards to the discovered wi fi vulnerabilities you can mitigate attacks that exfiltrate sensitive data by double checking that websites you are visiting use https even better you can install the https everywhere plugin this plugin forces the usage of https on websites that are known to support it to mitigate attacks where your router s nat firewall is bypassed and devices are directly attacked you must assure that all your devices are updated unfortunately not all products regularly receive updates in particular smart or internet of things devices in which case it is difficult if not impossible to properly secure them more technically the impact of attacks can also be reduced by manually configuring your dns server so that it cannot be poisoned specific to your wi fi configuration you can mitigate attacks but not fully prevent them by disabling fragmentation disabling pairwise rekeys and disabling dynamic fragmentation in wi fi 6 802 11ax devices does using eap tls increase the difficulty of attacks no all attacks are possible no matter how the client authenticates the network in other words attacks are identical against home and enterprise networks moreover it doesn t matter which eap method you use in an enterprise network all attacks remain possible and can be abused in exactly the same manner important to remark is that exploiting the design flaws relies on a multi channel machine in the middle position and abusing cve 2020 26146 relies on this mitm as well this mitm is not a traditional rogue ap instead the attacker is copying all frames from the real ap to a different wi fi channel this can be done no matter which authentication method the network is using you can read more about this mitm in my blog post does using 802 11w help mitigate attacks no using 802 11w also known as management frame protection has no impact on any of the attacks even attacks that rely on the multi channel machine in the middle position i e the design flaws and cve 2020 26146 remain possible when using 802 11w this is because this mitm isn t established by sending deauthentication or disassociation frames to first disconnect the client from the network instead to establish this mitm the attacker forces the client to switch to another channel this is accomplished by spoofing beacon frames that contain malicious channel switch announcements these beacon frames can be spoofed even when 802 11w is enabled meaning that enabling 802 11w won t make attacks harder you can read more about the multi channel mitm in my blog post this mitm can be established in precisely the same manner whether or not 802 11w is used why is wi fi security important we already have https these days a lot of websites and apps use https to encrypt data when using https an adversary cannot see the data you are transmitting even when you are connected to an open wi fi network this also means that you can safely use open wi fi hotspots as long as you keep your devices up to date and as long as you assure that websites are using https unfortunately not all websites require the usage of https i e they re not using hsts meaning they remain vulnerable to possible attacks at home the security of your wi fi network is also essential an insecure network means that others might be able to connect to the internet through your home additionally more and more devices are using wi fi to transfer personal files in your local network without an extra layer of protection e g when printing files smart display screens when sending files to a local backup storage digital photo stands and so on more problematic a lot of internet of things devices have tons of security vulnerabilities that can be exploited if an adversary can communicate with them the main thing that prevents an adversary from exploiting these insecure internet of things devices is the security of your wi fi network it therefore remains essential to have strong encryption and authentication at the wi fi layer at work the security of wi fi is also essential for the same reasons as menti...