Ethical hacker starts WPA cloud cracking service

Service checks password security using a 135 million word dictionary

A renowned security researcher has started a new service allowing companies to check the strength of their WPA-PSK encryption passwords.

Moxie Marlinspike, one of the team that revealed the possibility of hacking the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) at this year’s Black Hat conference, has started the WPA Cracker service for security testers and auditors.

The system uses a 400-processor cloud node to run a dictionary attack on WPA-PSK passwords. Marlinspike has developed the 135 million word dictionary specifically for this purpose.

“We offer two different cracking modes at two different prices. You can run your job against half of our CPU cluster for $17, or you can run it against the entire cluster for $34,” the service said in a statement.

“The half-mode will take at most 40 minutes to exhaust the entire 135 million word dictionary file (but hopefully we'd find your password before that), where as the full-mode will take at most 20 minutes.”

Marlinspike points out that a standard PC would take about a week to run a similar attack and the service would allow security audits in particular to check the strength of their WPA passwords.