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Frag Attacks - A critical Wifi vulnerability

Wifi fragmentation and aggregation attacks (FragAttacks) are a new collection of vulnerabilities in which a threat actor can exfiltrate data or attack victims within radio range. Mathy Vanhoef, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University Abu Dhabi, recently published his paper, Fragment and Forge: Breaking Wi-Fi through Frame Aggregation and Fragmentation, detailing several attack vectors and examining the intricacies of the aggregation vulnerabilities that have been part of the 802.11 standards since the inception in 1997. 

Quite interestingly, every device tested was susceptible to one or more of the FragAttacks. While several 802.11 standards make these attacks harder to perform, they can be executed on all devices across all standards. It's a good thing then, that there was a nine-month embargo on information related to these attacks, allowing manufacturers to provide security updates to affected devices.

Mathy Vanhoef has also created a website documenting the FragAttacks and has provided a tool that can be used to see if your device has been affected by these new vulnerabilities. It can be found at, https://www.fragattacks.com.

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