George, a professional hacker, targeted a bank employee and tried to crack his password while he was attempting to log on to the remote server to…

WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) is an encryption technology that secures wireless networks using

the IEEE 802.11i standard. WPA2 uses a four-way handshake to authenticate the client and the access

point, and to generate a pairwise transient key (PTK) for encrypting the data. The PTK is derived from

the password pairwise master key (PMK), which is a shared secret between the client and the access

point. The PMK can be obtained either by using a pre-shared key (PSK) or by using an 802.1X

authentication server. In the above scenario, George performed password cracking on WPA2, as he

used sniffing tools to capture the PMK associated with the handshake authentication process. Then,

using the PMK, he was able to derive the PTK and decrypt the data exchanged between the client

and the access point. Reference:

WPA2 - Wikipedia

How WPA2-PSK encryption works? - Cryptography Stack Exchange

WPA2 Encryption and Configuration Guide - Cisco Meraki Documentation