Vulnerabilities Inherent to the Standards Definitions

The underlying IEEE 802.11 standards definitions have some inherent vulnerabilities, which fall into two categories:

• Authentication and encryption weaknesses
• Unauthenticated management and control frames

The sections that follow look at some of the details.

Authentication and Encryption Weaknesses:

Authentication simply through the use of technologies to determine who and which devices are not allowed to the network and those who control access to the network and network resources. Encryption protects data frames on the network, the encryption algorithm used to obfuscate the contents of the frame border crossing. When you consider the vulnerabilities inherent in the transmission of media, it is quite obvious why it is really important that the security concept and the Wlan authentication and encryption.

The original IEEE 802.11 standard was announced in 1997 and called out to call for short wired equivalent privacy or WEP authentication and data privacy mechanism. This name because it reflects the standards designers provide a roughly equivalent to your wireless with wired Ethernet network data privacy framework that the original target. In other words, it is supposed to be as difficult to break WEP encryption because it is a violation of the physical security of enterprises in order to gain access to the wired network. WEP standard was designed to be "reasonably strong" safety and implement tradeoff between simplicity and exportability.


WEP shared key concepts. WEP WLAN to connect the two terminals share a secret key. WEP key can be used to authenticate the wireless devices if a device has a WEP key, it must be empowered!

Additionally encrypted using WEP key wireless LAN data transmission between each end of the connection. Original 1997 versions of the 802.11 specifications call out a 40-bit WEP key. In 1999, the specification allows expansion to a 104-bit key lengths. These keys to statically configure WLAN devices will be used.

Because 802.11 WLAN technologies began to take off, a lot of smart people in the cryptographic community began to take a good look at WEP as a security mechanism. In 2000 and 2001, several publishing landmark document detailing the WEP key issues. If you're really interested, the document lists the reference at the end of this chapter, they make excellent reading to combat insomnia.

These documents were published not long after, exploit tools appeared on the scene. These tools now readily available on the Internet, it is very easy to use, even for novices. So the most important thing to know about WEP is its irreversibility of Ley lines, and should not be used. It is worth repeating: WEP is entirely due to incorrect data privacy encryption flaws; do not use it.

Known to WEP WLAN security is not the answer, I of the IEEE developed 802.11 working group with a strong security plan for the future. 802.11 in 2004 I approved the work of the task force.

While I of the 802.11 standards are in draft form, the Wi-Fi Alliance released its claims based on a subset I of the 802.11 standard. The first iteration of these requirements is called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). Updates to these requirements is based on a complete and approved 802.11 standards I, known as Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2 (time). Industry as a whole has been relocated to the 802.11 i/WPAv2 based on safety, this is where you should be. In later chapters, you'll learn more about WPAv2.