The RC4 crypto scheme used in 802.11 wireless networking has been cracked. Worse yet, it scales linearly, so using a bigger key only makes the crack marginally harder. Worst of all, the crack is entirely passive– it relies only on listening to the stream.

Hopefully most commercial users already require their users to use this technology with a VPN client, but for home users, that’s often not an option.

I wonder if we’ll be hearing from Cringley about this? You’ll recall that a few weeks ago, I blogged his adventures in long-distance 802.11. He’s effectively transmitting 802.11 packets over five or ten miles. Perhaps he’s operating as a free ISP and doesn’t even know it!