Rice University Intern at AT&T Labs Breaks WEP Protocol
EE Times reports that Adam Stubblefield, a 20 year old intern from Rice University, successfully broke the WEP protocol while doing research at AT&T Labs in Florham Park, NJ. WEP, the Wired Equivalent Protocol, is considered the strongest form of encryption available on 802.11b wireless local area networks. Stubblefield reportedly recovered the 128-bit WEP key by implementing an attack specified in a previously published research paper.
According to EE Times, the exploit was accomplished with off-the-shelf hardware and code that was written and tested in less than a week. Not bad for an undergraduate on an internship.