Security firm releases tool to brute force routers

A Maryland security firm has released an open-source tool that can be used to exploit a vulnerability in the WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) standard that can be exploited to retrieve passwords. Tactical Network Solutions on Wednesday announced the release of the tool, called Reaver. "Reaver is capable of breaking WPS PINS and recovering the plain text WPA/WPA2 passphrase of the target access point in approximately four to 10 hours," a company blog post said. Disabling WPS is the only known fix for the vulnerability, discovered by researcher Stefan Viehbock, but functionality that locks out anyone who continuously re-enters the wrong passcode can "make an attack impractical," he said.