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reaver

v1.6.6 open-source

Brute-forces WPS registrar PINs to recover WPAWPAA Wi-Fi authentication and encryption standard maintained by the Wi-Fi Alliance, replacing WEP; cyber tools target it to audit wireless network credentials and key exchange handshakes./WPA2 passphrases, supporting both online and offline Pixie Dust attacks.

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Summary

Reaver is an open-source command-line tool that brute-forces WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) registrar PINs to recover WPA/WPA2 passphrases, using either a traditional online attack that can take several hours or an offline Pixie Dust attack that can finish in seconds to minutes if the access point is vulnerable. It is run directly against a target access point from the command line, with options to scan for WPS-enabled networks, track crack progress, and tune handling of frame errors and timeouts for specific router models. This fits the wireless-security space and is aimed at penetration testers auditing WiFi deployments rather than general network administrators. The project traces back to Craig Heffner's 2011 original and continues as a community fork with 42 contributors and 8 tracked releases, though only a single commit in the past year suggests development has largely settled.

Brute-forces WPS registrar PINs to recover WPA/WPA2 passphrases, supporting both online and offline Pixie Dust attacks.

How reaver helps

Which access points nearby have WPS enabled and are worth targeting?

scans the surrounding airspace and lists access points advertising WPS registrar support, the pool a PIN attack can actually work against

How far along is a multi-hour PIN attack, and is it worth leaving running?

tracks and reports the percentage of the PIN keyspace already tried so progress can be checked without guessing

What passphrase is actually protecting this network?

once the correct WPS registrar PIN is found, recovers the WPA/WPA2 passphrase it protects in plain text

Why does an attack against this specific router keep stalling or dying?

offers handling for frame checksum errors and for routers that respond to timeouts with a NACK instead of silence, both known quirks of specific router models that otherwise stop the PIN attempts from progressing

all 4 features, with the evidence for each →

Languages

Not documented

Features

4 capabilities · 1 backed by code, an API document or a real run

Built from reaver's releases, docs, README and our own runs. “Seen” marks the month we first spotted a release the vendor didn't date. Group names and tags are our labels.

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What reaver offers you

  • Command-line interface2
  • JSON data export1
All capabilities 4 capabilities
WPS PIN cracking verified Attempts to crack WPS PINs with configurable options including timeout-as-NACK handling, frame checksum error tolerance, and crack progress display. 2 releases · 6 other sources · first seen Jun 2017

release

  • Enables reaver to accept a user-specified arbitrary string as the WPS PIN using the existing -p flag, rather than being limited to auto-generated numeric PINs. v1.6.1 · Jun 2017 · source · release history
  • Adds Pixie Dust support with the -p flag to enable attacks when a valid PIN is found 1.6b · Jun 2017 · source · release history

command line

example

  • Run reaver on a specific AP while ignoring FCS errors. reaver -i wlan0mon -b <bssid> --ignore-fcs v1.6.5 · May 2018 · source
  • Scan for WPS-enabled access points wash -i wlan0mon
  • Basic WPS brute-force attack with verbose output reaver -i wlan0mon -b 00:90:4C:C1:AC:21 -vv
WPS AP discovery automation shipped Provides programmatic access to Wash scan results via JSON output for integration into automated workflows. 3 releases · 2 other sources · first seen Sep 2017

Also counts toward: Command-line interface, JSON data export

release

example

  • Scan both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands using wash without filtering FCS errors or sanitizing SSIDs. wash -i wlan0mon --ignore-fcs -U v1.6.5 · May 2018 · source
  • Parse wash findings programmatically for automation or integration. wash -j v1.6.2 · Sep 2017 · source
WPS session persistence shipped Automatically saves WPS cracking session data to a standard directory to support resuming interrupted attacks. 2 releases · 1 other source · first seen Jun 2017

Also counts toward: Command-line interface

release

  • Adds the -u command line switch to enable the experimental uptime feature v1.6.6 · Mar 2020 · source · release history
  • Session files are now saved to /var/lib/reaver instead of /etc/reaver. v1.6.1 · Jun 2017 · source · release history

example

  • Run reaver with the new experimental uptime switch to monitor session duration. reaver -u -i wlan0mon -b AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF v1.6.6 · Mar 2020 · source
Broadband chipset detection shipped Detects access points using Lantiq/MetaLink chipsets to prevent scanning failures on specific hardware variants. 1 release · first seen May 2018

release

Lines in monospace are the tool's own words: help text parsed from its source, or an endpoint from its API document. Under release, a line is our summary of a dated release. Under docs, it is quoted from the tool's own documentation or website. Each links back to the source it came from.

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for reaver, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

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Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail reaver puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

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Releases

Show

6 entries

  1. March 20201
  3. May 20181
  5. January 20181
  7. September 20171
  9. June 20172
    Show

    6 entries

    1. v1.6.6 Mar 16, 2020 · release notes

      reaver v1.6.6 adds -u switch for experimental uptime display

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.6.6 https://github.com/t6x/reaver-wps-fork-t6x.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.6.6
      └──▷ USE IT
      Run reaver with the new experimental uptime switch to monitor session duration.
      shell 
      reaver -u -i wlan0mon -b AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF
    2. v1.6.5 May 11, 2018 · release notes

      reaver v1.6.5 adds band selection in wash, UTF-8 ESSID support, and Lantiq chipset detection

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.6.5 https://github.com/t6x/reaver-wps-fork-t6x.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.6.5
      └──▷ TRY IT
      Scan both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands using wash without filtering FCS errors or sanitizing SSIDs.
      $ wash -i wlan0mon --ignore-fcs -U
      Run reaver on a specific AP while ignoring FCS errors.
      $ reaver -i wlan0mon -b <bssid> --ignore-fcs
      • Adds --ignore-fcs option to both reaver and wash to skip FCS check errors
      • Adds -U/--utf8 flag to wash to opt out of ESSID sanitization
      • Brings back the ability to select both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands in wash
      • Adds detection support for Lantiq/MetaLink chipsets

      4 details in Everything

      └──▷ BREAKING ON UPGRADE
      • !The -D/--daemonize command line option has been removed
      • !The -o (--out-file) option has been removed
      • !Non-AP output from wash now goes to stderr instead of stdout
    3. v1.6.4 Jan 18, 2018 · release notes

      Adds support for Wireless N HT-capable APs and QoS data packets in reaver v1.6.4

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.6.4 https://github.com/t6x/reaver-wps-fork-t6x.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.6.4
      • Add support for APs that require Wireless N HT capabilities

      1 detail in Everything

    4. v1.6.2 Sep 26, 2017 · release notes

      reaver v1.6.2 adds -j JSON output to the wash utility

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.6.2 https://github.com/t6x/reaver-wps-fork-t6x.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.6.2
      └──▷ USE IT
      Parse wash findings programmatically for automation or integration.
      shell 
      wash -j
    5. v1.6.1 Jun 29, 2017 · release notes

      Supports arbitrary string PIN via -p option in reaver v1.6.1

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch v1.6.1 https://github.com/t6x/reaver-wps-fork-t6x.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout v1.6.1
      └──▷ BREAKING ON UPGRADE
      • !Session files are now saved to /var/lib/reaver instead of /etc/reaver.
    6. 1.6b Jun 21, 2017 · release notes

      Adds preliminary Pixie Dust WPS attack support via the new -p flag

      └──▷ GET THIS VERSION 
      $ git clone --branch 1.6b https://github.com/t6x/reaver-wps-fork-t6x.git
# already have the repo? check out this version:
$ git checkout 1.6b

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in t6x/reaver-wps-fork-t6x, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 1 ±0 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 0 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 0 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close < 1 day first maintainer reply 2.2 hours
    6. Open backlog 22 of 266 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 22
    3. Contributors / month 0
    4. Commits / month 0
    5. Stars 1,986
    Issue themes, last 12 months
    • other 100%

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

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    What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.

    None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.

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