Mephisto2

I think you mean "but from what I've heard it's what WEP was supposed to be -- actually secure. "


WPA mitigates the so-called Fluhrer style attack (also known as the AirSnort attack) that cracks WEP by intercepting packets and reverse engineering the WEP key by leveraging known "weak Initialization Vectors".

What does this mean in English?

Basically, WEP works by encrypting all your data with a "key". Both the client and the access point share the same key. Each and every packet is encrypted by using that key (and a psuedo-random numerical string called an Initialization Vector). You can only decrypt the data if you know the key, so in theory your access point and client are able to talk to each other securely. No one else knows the key, right?

Well, if you can capture enough WEP packets, and do some fancy mathematical footwork based upon known and predictable "weak IVs", then you can calculate what the WEP was. You "reverse calculate" it. The more packets you capture the better, but this can often be done in less than hour (depending upon how much traffic you intercept).

WPA addresses this problem by introducing something called the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). It also enhances security by using longer IV's and using additional sub-protocols like Message Integrity Check (MIC). TKIP improves upon WEP by basically using a different key (for encryption) for each and every packet. In other words, it doesn't matter if someone snoops the network and captures hundreds of thousands of packets, as each and every one is encrypted differently. They can't "reverse-calculate" the key and so the network is secure.


WPA comes in two flavours. WPA used with EAP/802.1x and WPA-PSK. Forget about WAP with EAP/802.1x as it's only used in large enterprise networks. What you use at home will be WPA-PSK. In this flavour, you use a "Pre Shared Key" on both the access point and client. Without going into too much detail, just remember to make this key a long string of random characters. Do NOT use something silly like "Password". Make it long and random. Something like "Tjks7$0-8slhyu09djd0" With a PSK (Pre Shared Key) like the example just given, no one will crack your WLAN.


Mr Mephisto