CEH Practice Question: Advanced Topics: Wireless, Cloud, IoT, Cryptography
During a penetration test, a tester captures the WPA2 4-way handshake with airodump-ng and then uses aircrack-ng with a wordlist. However, the PSK is not found. Which of the following is the MOST likely reason?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The wordlist does not contain the PSK
If the PSK is not in the wordlist, dictionary attacks will fail. Other steps (capture, cracking) were done correctly.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Aircrack-ng does not support WPA2 cracking
Why it's wrong here
Aircrack-ng is a robust suite of tools specifically designed for wireless network auditing, including comprehensive support for cracking WPA2 Pre-Shared Key (PSK) networks. Its capabilities extend to capturing the 4-way handshake and performing dictionary-based attacks against the captured hash. Therefore, stating that Aircrack-ng does not support WPA2 cracking is fundamentally incorrect, as it is one of its primary functions and widely used for this purpose.
- ✗
The handshake was not captured correctly
Why it's wrong here
If the WPA2 4-way handshake was not captured correctly or was incomplete, Aircrack-ng would typically fail to process the capture file and would explicitly indicate an error. The tool is designed to validate the integrity of the handshake frames before attempting a dictionary attack, ensuring all necessary EAPOL messages are present. Since the tester proceeded to attempt cracking, it implies a valid handshake was indeed captured, making this option an unlikely reason for the attack's failure.
- ✓
The wordlist does not contain the PSK
Why this is correct
The WPA2 cracking process, once the 4-way handshake is captured, relies entirely on an offline dictionary attack against the derived Pairwise Master Key (PMK) hash. If the Pre-Shared Key (PSK) used by the target network is not present within the provided wordlist, the attack will inevitably fail to find a match. This is a fundamental limitation of dictionary attacks; they are only as effective as the comprehensiveness and relevance of the wordlist used to guess the password.
- ✗
The network uses WPA3 instead of WPA2
Why it's wrong here
WPA3 networks utilize the Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE) handshake, which is a more robust, password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocol, fundamentally different from WPA2's 4-way handshake. The question explicitly states the tester captured a WPA2 4-way handshake, which is characteristic of WPA2-PSK and not WPA3. Therefore, the network cannot be using WPA3, as its handshake mechanism would be entirely different and not a 4-way exchange.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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