Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) handshake traffic can be manipulated to induce nonce and session key reuse, resulting in key reinstallation by a victim wireless access point (AP) or client. After establishing a man-in-the-middle position between an AP and client, an attacker can selectively manipulate the timing and transmission of messages in the WPA2 Wireless Network Management (WNM) Sleep Mode handshake, resulting in out-of-sequence reception or retransmission of messages.

An attacker within the wireless communications range of an affected AP and client may leverage these vulnerabilities to conduct attacks that are dependent on the data confidentiality protocol being used. Attacks may include arbitrary packet decryption and injection, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection, or the replay of unicast, broadcast, and multicast frames.