What is WEP and how really secure is it? WEP open or shared?

I will show you what is WEP and how really secure it is. Which one to use, WEP open or shared?

WEP means Wired Equivalent Privacy. But it has never proven his name. Why is that, you ask? It is really easy to crack it. It does not take more than 2 minutes to crack it with the right tool.

First WEP versions have used the 64-bit shared key. 40 bits are for a shared secret and 24 bits are for IV – initialization vector. IV is used that receiver could decrypt the frame.

Next improvement of first WEP key was the 128-bit shared WEP key. With that WEP version 104 bits are used for the shared key and 24 for initialization vector.

IEEE proposed in 2004 a new version of WEP – WEP2. It uses the same RC4 algorithm with 128-bit initialization vector. WEP2 has not improved significantly security. It only increases time for cracking.

WEP was designed for minimal data protection in the air. It does not support high level security.

There are many of WEP weaknesses:

1) Manual key management is a big security problem.

2) WEP depends on the secret keys that are widely shared. It could be many users, and the WEP keys must be changed for new users to ensure some level of a security.

3) WEP does not protect users from one other. When all users are using one WEP key, it is easy to decrypt data.

Here you can find out more about authentication. Which authentication to use, open or shared? With WEP, as only security method, none of them are giving you enough security.

Open WEP is giving you nothing of the security. With shared WEP you will get the minimum security, which is not enough, if you are using it alone.