Users have to update the wpa_supplicant package

Oct 17, 2017 13:28 GMT  ·  By

Former Fedora Project leader Paul W. Frields talks today about how to protect your Fedora computers from the dangerous WPA2 KRACK security vulnerability that affects virtually any device using the security protocol to connect to the Internet.

The WPA2 bugs was publicly disclosed by security researcher Mathy Vanhoef, who demoed in a video how GNU/Linux and Android operating systems are vulnerable to the Key Reinstallation Attack or KRACK, allowing hackers to obtain sensitive information like credit card numbers, passwords and usernames, etc.

On Linux, the bug is present in the wpa_supplicant package, which was already patched in Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary OS, Arch Linux, Solus, and many other popular GNU/Linux distros, and it's coming very soon to the stable repositories of Fedora Linux too, so you need to update your system as soon as possible.

"You may have heard about KRACK (for “Key Reinstallation Attack”), a vulnerability in WPA2-protected Wi-Fi," said Paul W. Frields in the tutorial. "This attack could let attackers decrypt, forge, or steal data, despite WPA2’s improved encryption capabilities. Fear not — fixes for Fedora packages are on their way to stable."

Here's how to install the latest wpa_supplicant right now to protect your Wi-Fi

If you want to protect your Wi-Fi network when you're using Fedora Linux, you must run the "sudo dnf update wpa_supplicant" command in a terminal emulator, assuming the new version is already in the main repo. Fedora 25, Fedora 26, and the upcoming Fedora 27 releases are affected by the WPA2 bug.

But if the wpa_supplicant update hasn't yet landed in the stable repositories of your Fedora Linux OS, you can manually install the latest version using the commands listed below. Make sure you replace wpa_supplicant-2.6-11.fc26 with either wpa_supplicant-2.6-3.fc25.1 or wpa_supplicant-2.6-11.fc27 if you're using Fedora 25 or 27 Beta.

sudo dnf install bodhi-client
mkdir ~/krack-update && cd ~/krack-update
bodhi updates download wpa_supplicant-2.6-11.fc26
dnf update ./wpa_supplicant*.rpm