RR 4.0
WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy
WEP – is a weak security algorithm for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. Introduced as part of the original 802.11 standard ratified in September 1999, its intention was to provide data confidentiality comparable to that of a traditional wired network.WEP, recognizable by the key of 10 or 26 hexadecimal digits, is widely in use and is often the first security choice presented to users by router configuration tools.
Although its name implies that it is as secure as a wired connection, WEP has been demonstrated to have numerous flaws and has been deprecated in favor of newer standards such as WPA2. In 2003 the Wi-Fi Alliance announced that WEP had been superseded by Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). In 2004, with the ratification of the full 802.11i standard (i.e. WPA2), the IEEE declared that both WEP-40 and WEP-104 “have been deprecated as they fail to meet their security goals”.
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A 64-bit WEP key is usually entered as a string of 10 hexadecimal (base 16) characters (0-9 and A-F). Each character represents four bits, 10 digits of four bits each gives 40 bits; adding the 24-bit IV produces the complete 64-bit WEP key. Most devices also allow the user to enter the key as five ASCII characters, each of which is turned into eight bits using the character’s byte value in ASCII; however, this restricts each byte to be a printable ASCII character, which is only a small fraction of possible byte values, greatly reducing the space of possible keys.
A 128-bit WEP key is usually entered as a string of 26 hexadecimal characters. 26 digits of four bits each gives 104 bits; adding the 24-bit IV produces the complete 128-bit WEP key. Most devices also allow the user to enter it as 13 ASCII characters.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_Equivalent_Privacy
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Remy Se7en
