Wireless LAN Security

This updated guide examines Wireless LAN Security and organizes the essential facts, background, and practical takeaways in clear American English.

Example of a stranger accessing the network

3. Weaknesses in security 802.11 The IEEE 802.11 standard offers a WEP ( Wired Equivalent Privacy ) to protect wireless transmissions. WEP is using a symmetric zero string to encrypt users in the wireless network. 802.11 offers 64-bit WEP keys but is provided with a 128-bit WEP key. 802.11 does not show how the keys are arranged. A WEP consists of two parts: a 24-bit initialization (IV) vector and a secret key. IV is played in plain text in the header of 802.11 packets. However it is very vulnerable to 'crack'. So the next solution is to use dynamic WEP keys that can be changed on a regular basis. The 802.11 standard identifies clients using WEP keys. The industry standard was then introduced through 802.1x validation (see section 7 ) to complement the shortcomings of the previous 802.11 standard. Recently, however, the University of Maryland has documented the problem of potential security issues with this 802.1x protocol. The solution today is to use mutual validation to prevent 'someone in between' attacks and dynamic WEP keys, which are carefully arranged and encrypted channels. Both of these techniques are supported by the protocol ( TLS: Transport Layer Security ). Most prominent is the per-packet locking and checking the integrity of the message. This is the 802.11i security standard.

: Wireless LAN security (Term 2) Wireless LAN security (Term 3)