WEP Vs WPA - What Is A Better Solution?
WEP vs WPA – which one to use? The answer for this question is very easy - WPA!
On the WEP key find in less than a minute you can read about how it is very easy to crack WEP in less than 60 seconds. WEP which has been used from 1999 has never deserved its name - Wired Equivalent Privacy.
Read more about Wired Equivalent Privacy on WEP open or shared.
WPA has opened a new page in WLAN security. Wi-Fi Alliance has launched WPA in October 2003. You can use the same equipment, with much better security option – WPA. The only thing you need to do is to upgrade the software and firmware. Main weaknesses of WEP are:
1) The same IV (initialization vector) can be used more than once. This feature makes WEP very vulnerable, especially to collision-based attacks.
2) With IV of 24 bits, you only have about 16.7 million of possible combinations.
3) Masters keys, instead of temporary keys, are directly used.
4 Most users usually do not change their keys. This gives hackers more time to crack the encryption.
Advantages of WPA over WEP are:
1) Length of IV (initialization vector) is now 48, comparing to WEP’s 24. This gives you over 500 trillion possible key combinations.
2) IV has much better protection with better encryption methods. This is a prevention of reuse of IV keys.
3) Master keys are never directly used.
4) Better key management.
5) Impressive message integrity checking.
When you take at all what I stated here, my advice is to use WPA. Now every broadband wireless router supports not only WPA, but also WPA 2. On the What is WPA you could learn what is WPA and all the different versions of WPA. The way to configure your wireless router, with the best possible security, check in Setting up a Wireless Router. Even WPA is not 100 percent secure. How to make your network almost unbreakable read on How can you protect from Hacking WPA.
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