[MLB-WIRELESS] Re: Strong WEP Key Generator

[Mike Warnecke]

On Mon, 2003-05-05 at 03:22, Jason Hecker wrote:
> Ah,
> 
> Yes, well, I was just quoting the site name.  For anyone who can't be arsed 
> typing in a "random" number, it'll do it for you - probably more random that 
> doing one by hand and better than using ASCII input which are based on 
> dictionary words most of the time.  I agree WEP is borked, but... it's a good 
> site for the lazy - especially for 256 WEP (just cut'n'paste).  Surely by 
> now, the small subset of truly strong keys would be worked out by now and 
> probably in a dictionary somewhere... if there ae truly strong keys in WEP.
> 
> Afterwards I had a look at the javascript and then compared it to nwepgen from 
> the linux-wlan source tree.  They are just random number generators.  Anyone 
> got any good pointers to sites on how to make a good key for WEP?

Considering we care about WEP, and can not use something better over an
unencrypted wireless link like CIPE,  here is how I generate "strong"
keys under Linux:

dd if=/dev/random bs=1 count=16 | hexdump

Which grabs 16 bytes (bs=1 means 1 byte * count=16 = 16 bytes = 128
bits) from the system entropy pool (a opposed to a random number
generator like /dev/urandom) and dumps the output as hexadecimal.  I
make no claims about how strong the system entropy pool is, but I feel
it is better than a random number generator.

This key can then be loaded into the network card using iwconfig.
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