Convert a WEP passphrase to hex

Traveling the world you may find yourself in a place where the Wi-Fi access point is WEP protected. The owner can only provide you with an alphanumeric passphrase, whereas your Linux notebook expects you to enter the corresponding hexadecimal key. Somewhere on the web we found the following code to generate hex keys from passphrases and it works like charm!

Compile and link it against the libcrypto shared library:

gcc -Wall keygen.c /usr/lib/libcrypto.a -o wepkeygen

Or get the the binary right here: wepkeygen.zip

Generate a set of 64 bit keys (your best chance is that the first one will work):

./wepkeygen <passphrase> | tr -d ':'

Generate a 128 bit key:

./wepkeygen -s <passphrase> | tr -d ':\n'

That’s all!

keygen.c:

/*
 * keygen.c
 *  WEP Key Generators
 *
 * This program generates WEP keys using de facto standard key
 * generators for 40 and 128 bit keys.
 *
 * Link against OpenSSL's libcrypto.a
 *
 * I place this code in the public domain.
 * May 2001, Tim Newsham
 */
 
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <openssl/md5.h>
 
#define WEPKEYSIZE          5
#define WEPSTRONGKEYSIZE    13
#define WEPKEYS             4
#define WEPKEYSTORE         (WEPKEYSIZE * WEPKEYS)
 
/*
 * generate four subkeys from a seed using the defacto standard
 */
void
wep_seedkeygen(int val, u_char *keys)
{
    int i;
 
    for(i = 0; i < WEPKEYSTORE; i++) {
        val *= 0x343fd;
        val += 0x269ec3;
        keys[i] = val >> 16;
    }
    return;
}
 
/*
 * generate one key from a string using the de facto standard
 *
 * resultant key is stored in
 *   one 128 bit key: keys[0-15]
 *
 * (NOTE: I'm not sure why, but it seems that only values 0-12 are used,
 * resulting in 104 bits of keying, not 128)
 */
void
wep_keygen128(char *str, u_char *keys)
{
    MD5_CTX ctx;
    u_char buf[64];
    int i, j;
 
    /* repeat str until buf is full */
    j = 0;
    for(i = 0; i < 64; i++) {
        if(str[j] == 0)
            j = 0;
        buf[i] = str[j++];
    }
 
    MD5_Init(&ctx);
    MD5_Update(&ctx, buf, sizeof buf);
    MD5_Final(buf, &ctx);
 
    memcpy(keys, buf, WEPKEYSTORE);
    for(i = 0; i < WEPSTRONGKEYSIZE; i++) {
        keys[i] = buf[i];
    }
    for(; i < WEPKEYSTORE; i++) {
        keys[i] = 0;
    }
    return;
}
 
/*
 * generate four subkeys from a string using the defacto standard
 *
 * resultant keys are stored in
 *   four 40 bit keys: keys[0-4], keys[5-9], keys[10-14] and keys[15-20]
 */
void
wep_keygen40(char *str, u_char *keys)
{
    int val, i, shift;
 
    /*
     * seed is generated by xor'ing in the keystring bytes
     * into the four bytes of the seed, starting at the little end
     */
    val = 0;
    for(i = 0; str[i]; i++) {
        shift = i & 0x3;
        val ^= (str[i] << (shift * 8));
    }
 
    wep_seedkeygen(val, keys);
    return;
}
 
void
wep_keyprint(u_char *keys)
{
    int i;
    char sepchar;
 
    for(i = 0; i < WEPKEYSTORE; i++) {
        sepchar = (i % WEPKEYSIZE == WEPKEYSIZE - 1) ? '\n' : ':';
        printf("%02x%c", keys[i], sepchar);
    }
    return;
}
 
void
usage(char *prog)
{
    printf("Usage:  %s [-s] keystring\n", prog);
    exit(1);
}
 
int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    u_char keys[WEPKEYSTORE];
    char *prog, *genstr;
    int strong, ch;
 
    prog = argv[0];
    strong = 0;
    while((ch = getopt(argc, argv, "s")) != EOF) {
        switch(ch) {
        case 's':
            strong ++;
            break;
        default:
            usage(prog);
        }
    }
    argc -= optind;
    argv += optind;
 
    if(argc != 1)
        usage(prog);
    genstr = argv[0];
 
    if(strong)
        wep_keygen128(genstr, keys);
    else
        wep_keygen40(genstr, keys);
 
    wep_keyprint(keys);
    return 0;
}