Connecting to a password-protected Wi-Fi network requires a handshake — a cryptographic exchange proving both sides know the password, without ever sending it in plain text.
WPA2's 4-way handshake exchanges values derived from the password and can be captured passively (or forced with a deauth). Once captured, an attacker takes it fully offline — no more contact with the network is needed — and can try millions of password guesses per second on ordinary hardware, checking each guess purely against the captured math.
WPA3's SAE handshake ("Simultaneous Authentication of Equals", based on the Dragonfly key exchange) is built differently: every single password guess needs a fresh, live protocol round-trip with the real access point. Captured SAE traffic alone cannot be used to test a guess offline — there's nothing in it to check a guess against without the AP's live participation. So an attacker is stuck guessing at whatever rate the live network allows: slow, and each failed attempt is an event the AP can throttle or lock out.
- Capture — an eavesdropper listens to (or forces) the handshake on each network. Both captures succeed; what differs is what the data is worth afterwards.
- Offline attack — WPA2's capture lets guessing run at full hardware speed, independent of the network. WPA3's SAE capture stalls at 0%: "cannot verify offline".
- Live online guessing — the only way to test a WPA3 password is to ask the real AP, one guess at a time, throttled and visible to it.