weakness in WEP theory

[adam2016]

Hi guys,

I'm doing a college project on the weaknesses/flaws in wireless protocols like
WEP and WPA/WPA2

I understand how an attacker gets the plain text of a message, IV's are a fixed size so it's just a matter of time before a message is encrypted with the same IV and ofcourse the same passphrase is always used, once an attacker captures
two messages with the same IV he/she can work this message out with by xoring
the two messages to get the cipher text of those messages but that's all well
and good but how does the the attacker actually crack the key and get
access to the network?

I'm following this - http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.html
maybe I'm missing something?

thanks

[dhayden]

how does the the attacker actually crack the key

The link you posted gives various methods to attack the key bit by bit. At some point, it usually involves brute force. The goal of the attack is to reduce the search space.

and get access to the network?

That's the easy part. It's a wireless network. All that's required is physical proximity or a big enough antenna.