I must examine the specifications of wireless routers. Do they actively reject an invalid WPA key or do they just ignore the incorrect key? I have many questions about this including:
- Can a flood of bad WPA keys cause a buffer overrun in weak/cheap or unfinalized hardware/firmware?
- Can a specially crafted WPA key or authentication packet have an effect similar to an SQL injection?
I ask these questions not to spark a hacking discussion, but a discussion about how solid consumer WIFI products really are.
Are they subjected to extensive testing by the companies who develop them? One would hope so, but the trend of cheap electronics is discouraging and leads me to think the opposite is true about the security of consumer WIFI devices.
Given the proprietary nature of most firmware, there could be many fatal flaws just waiting to be found, but the same is true with anything proprietary.