Perhaps you may not know exactly what the difference is between WEP and WPA many experts often suggest that one use the less known WPA as opposed to the more popular WEP. Since there are many people who would not even know the difference between the two we have created this article which may shed a bit of light on just what makes them different.
WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy is the standard 802.11's initial hardware security form where both WAP and the specific users are actually configured with a special encryption key. This key is usually either 64 bits long or the newer 128 bits. It is generally setup in HEX format. What happens is that when a user attempts to provide their authentication the AP will issue a randomly selected challenge. The user would then return this challenge properly encrypted with the security key. Then the AP decrypts the returned challenge and compares it with the info it has. Should the key match the original then the client is considered to be properly authenticated.
WEP presents a major security flaw in that the key that is used remains static. This means that provided sufficient time and the proper tools a hacker could eventually crack the encryption key. It goes without saying that the process does affect the actual transmission speed of the data.
At the University of Maryland as well as at Berkley University in California studies have been conducted which consider that with the use of a WEP key a hacker could successfully decrypt the key in only 8 hours to a couple of days. AT&T Labs has managed to reduce this hacking time drastically with obtaining network key results in a mere fifteen minutes or less! The American FBI agency has demonstrated that they can do that same thing in an amazing 3-minute. Perhaps you may not realize exactly why this is so important. In a nutshell this means that a hacker could have an uninterrupted trip into your personal or private network resources in only a few minutes or less.
The Wi-Fi Protected Access or commonly referred to as WPA resolves some of the problems noted with the WPA static encryption issue. The WPA protocol uses the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol or TKIP. This system changes the key with each data packet sent. It includes what is called a message integrity check which guard against the possibility of forged packets. Needless to say the WPA is also not without its downfalls and faults. With every increase in security we tend to decrease our speed. Even worse is that with WPA, in the home version particularly, the system will utilize a shared pass phrase. Should the user decide to use one of the pass phrases which may perhaps be found in the dictionary or if they use one that has less then 21 characters in it the WPA can easily be cracked by merely using one of the brute force dictionary type attack programs.
