I had an argument with an IT professor I know regarding passwords and security. I was mad about my in-laws having a weak WPA1 protected router and the stock password while I insist on having WPA3 and a very strong passphrase.
Well, the discussion continued and later he said something to the point of “everything tries to guess your password, so I don’t have any where it is possible, because the programs don’t know what to do if there isn’t one“
What are your opinions about this?
That’s a profound misunderstanding of how login brute force works. Also a profound misunderstanding of how credentials cracking/storage works. Basic CTF knowledge would get you that understanding.
I’m not a security “expert” by any stretch, and I’m not a “hacker” either. I’m just a sysadmin that enjoys HTB/THM CTFs. So with that in mind I’m not super knowledgeable on the approach to attacking wifi specifically.
However, generally the first thing we all, and by all I mean CTF players, try is blank passwords/anonymous login. For me I do those manually, but I assure you nessus/ZAP have no problems finding those either (I’ve seen those on reports professionally before). To add to that, the first line of my rockyou list is a blank line for the above “blank password” reason. Ffuf/burpe/gobuster/nmap script/my custom python script/whatever are all going to try blank passwords first to see what I get. The program itself doesn’t give a single shit if I pass it a blank string. Not only that but I’m analyzing the return code, and response length to figure out if I got in or not. At no point will any program be fooled by a blank password.