What is WPA-PSK?
WPA-PSK is a mode of WPA that is for home users without enterprise authentication requirements (business). WPA-PSK overcomes the major encryption issues with WEP, however, a weak WPA passphrase can be cracked in less then 30 seconds if a bad guy can manage to trick your wireless access point to reveal it’s intial handshake with the wireless client. Don’t confuse passphrase with password as they are totally different. A good example of a weak passphrase that can be easily cracked is something like “myaccesspoint” or “passphrase”. A bad guy can take this handshake data and crack your pre-shared key with a brute force or dictionary attack. The only defense against this type of attack is to use a long passphrase that would take years to crack even with the powerful computers we use today. How to create a good passphrase? The best way that I have found to create a good passphrase is to use a secure password generator website like the one Steve Gibson has created. What is nice about Steve’s
