WEP
WEP
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a scheme to secure wireless networks (WiFi). Because a wireless network broadcasts messages using radio, it is particularly susceptible to eavesdropping. WEP was intended to provide comparable confidentiality to a traditional wired network, hence the name. Several serious weaknesses were identified by cryptanalysts, and WEP was superseded by Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) in 2003, and then by the full IEEE 802.11i standard (also known as WPA2) in 2004. Despite the weaknesses, WEP provides a level of security that can deter casual snooping.
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3e525A-3 Wireless Access Point Maximum security and flexibility with outdoor or indoor use. The 3e525A-3 Wireless Access Point is packaged in a rugged NEMA 4/IP 67 weatherproof enclosure and conforms to 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g wireless standards.
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WEP Related Industry News
Appliances, standards boost WLAN security When we looked at wireless LAN security last October in a previous Roundup, we painted a fairly bleak picture. At that time, virtual private networks (VPNs) were the best way to fix the well-known vulnerabilities in the Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP), which guards most wireless LANs. But VPNs cost as much as $1,500 per wireless access point (AP) and often forced you to lock yourself into one vendor's gear.
Since then, we've seen progress on both......
[more] Ten steps to low-cost wireless LAN security Let me guess: Despite your best efforts to stop them, users are hooking low-cost 802.11b (Wi-Fi) access points (APs) to the corporate network. And, despite your best efforts, your CFO has zero interest in buying the tools you really need to secure these wireless LANs.
Here, then, are some relatively simple, low-cost ways to boost the security of your wireless LANs. They're not perfect, but they do provide at least a first line of defense. And if a......
[more] What's the difference between a viral attack and a scan? Infosec exhibitors were yesterday urged to check their systems for a virus after the performance of the security conference's network took a severe hit.
Exhibitors received an advisory from eForce, which is responsible for the networking and security of Olympia, Infosec's venue, that warned of an attack linked to a Trojan called Deloader.
According to exhibitor MIS Corporate Defence Solutions, the virus had "some effect on the per......
[more] Getting a grip on WLAN futures The wireless LAN world is a pretty bad offender when it comes to Alphabet Soup, what with 802.11b preceding 802.11a, and neither being the same type of thing as 802.11e*. So it was useful to hear Jan Haagh, a senior product manager in Proxim's WLAN division, talk through some of latest acronyms.
One to watch out for is WPA, or WiFi Protected Access. This will replace the original WEP wireless security standard, which turned out to be not very secure after all.......
[more] City sees the benefits of wireless networks Survey shows more businesses are convinced but security is still lax The third annual Wireless Security Survey of London has highlighted a significant increase in the use of wireless networks by businesses.
In the two years since the survey was first undertaken, the number of wireless networks used in the City has increased from 124 in 2001, to 328 in 2002 and 1078 in 2003.
The benefits of the technology appear to have convinced companies, and th......
[more] Opportunities for Wi-Fi hackers on the increase London home to rogue access points IT managers are catching up to the dangers of Wi-Fi, but opportunities for drive-by hackers in London may actually be increasing. New wireless LANs are popping up very fast, and many of them are insecure 'rogue' access points.
This year, only two-thirds of the City's Wi-Fi networks have WEP (wired equivalent privacy), the basic Wi-Fi security standard turned on. That's not a great record, but it is better than l......
[more] THE A to Z of wireless terms and technologies Everything you need to know about Wireless Jargon 802.11a
54Mbps wireless Ethernet operating in the 5GHz band.
802.11b
The industry standard 11Mbps wireless Ethernet operating at 2.4GHz.
802.11e
Defines quality-of-service for wireless local area networks, to support voice-over IP for example.
802.11g
Successor to 802.11b, providing up to 54Mbps over the same 2.4GHz spectrum used by 802.11b.
802.11h
A supplement to 802.11a to ensure t......
[more] Wardriving for WLAN security The 4th Annual Worldwide Wardrive (WWWD) is under way this week, with volunteers scanning the airwaves in a neighborhood near you for wireless LAN access points.
This year's WLAN discovery effort began June 12 and runs through June 19.
The WWWD is organized by a mixed group of security professionals and hobbyists who cruise areas to document the location of access points and how many of them have even minimal security. The goal is to boost awareness of the n......
[more] AirMagnet Tends CBK's Wireless Networks Nine months ago, Todd Little sat in a cafe with his laptop and was amazed by the number of wireless networks he could see. This got the network administrator at CBK Ltd. thinking: "What could people see coming from behind CBK's walls?"
Although Little was sure his wireless networks at CBK, a wholesaler of home accents in Union City, Tenn., were secure, he decided to play it safe. He deployed AirMagnet Inc.'s Distributed Starter Kit, a wireless security o......
[more] First Wi-Fi products get security certificate The Wi-Fi Alliance got its next certification programme off to a flying start, issuing WPA2 badges to a bunch of products that comply with the 802.11i security specification. The Alliance is readying other programmes for quality of service and the 802.11n fast Wi-Fi standard due next year.
The WPA2 certified products include generic designs from Atheros Communications and Broadcom, so customers can expect to buy products with the badges on by the en......
[more] 802.11i: The next big thing The IEEE standard called Robust Security Networking is a force to be reckoned with. As an amendment to the original 802.11 WLAN standard, 802.11i replaces the original meager 10-page WEP discussion with more than 200 pages of detailed protocol on how to lock unwanted users out of your wireless network.
Approved in July, 802.11i products have started to appear in the market. Even though we received our test equipment before the final draft of the standard was ratifi......
[more] Some WLANs open to dictionary attack A dictionary attack tool designed to exploit a weakness the Wi-Fi Protected Access security for wireless LANs has been published on the Web.
The software, called WPA Cracker, exploits one option that can be used in WPA, usually in consumer applications or residential WLANs: a pre-shared encryption key. This key is simpler to use and deploy than using the more complex 802.1x for authentication.
With the pre-shared key, a common shared pass phrase is set f......
[more] WLAN Security Adoption Still Trailing Despite Widespread Use of Wireless in the Workplace Around 70 percent of British organisations are either already using or planning to use wireless connectivity as part of everyday business. Yet security remains top of the list when it comes to wireless networking concerns, with more than a third of companies admitting that they would have no way of knowing if their wireless security measures were breached. These are some of the main findings of an independ......
[more] Access all areas Doubts about security have long discouraged many firms from deploying mobile computing. But wireless technology has moved on When many companies find it hard enough to control the IT use of office-based employees, how do you convince them that giving staff remote access is a good idea?
This is the dilemma that faces all notebook, wireless networking and remote-management software manufacturers and resellers. There are a lot of variables to consider. The process of providing a m......
[more] Why standards are important for wireless security Industry standards play a critical role in R&D, product development and marketing initiatives which in turn help organizations meet their business objectives. Standards simplify product development and reduce non-value-adding costs, thereby increasing a user's ability to compare competing products. Standards also represent fundamental building blocks for international trade and communications.
Successful businesses benefit from standards both......
[more] The Case of the Stolen Wi-Fi Whether you're unwittingly sharing your wireless LAN or poaching, be aware of the risks. Benjamin Smith III and Gregory Straszkiewicz both were arrested for allegedly stealing something no one could see, hear, or feel. That thing was valuable enough for victims to press charges in both cases. But the arrests were over something many consumers throw out their windows every day: a Wi-Fi signal.
The idea of a police car roaring down the street to catch a roving "Doom"......
[more] Finns urge better Wi-Fi security after bank break-in Finland calls on its citizens to secure their Wi-Fi networks Finland called on its citizens to take more care securing their Wi-Fi networks after it emerged this week that about €200,000 ($245,400) had been stolen from a local bank using an unprotected home network.
The Helsinki branch of global financing company GE Money called on police to investigate the theft in June. The money, which has since been recovered, was stolen from one of GE......
[more] Microsoft creates virtual Wi-Fi Microsoft has developed a technique to allow people to access multiple Wi-Fi networks with a single Wi-Fi card.
Virtual Wi-Fi is designed to improve multitasking, save money on hardware and reduce the power needed for Wi-Fi communications. The software is designed to run with Windows XP.
"The current version of Virtual Wi-Fi allows a user to connect a wireless Lan card to multiple wireless networks," said Microsoft Research in a statement.
"It dynamically ada......
[more] AirMagnet Introduces BlueSweep Utility for Bluetooth AirMagnet, Inc., the leader in wireless LAN (WLAN) security and performance solutions, today introduced its BlueSweep software, designed to identify nearby devices with Bluetooth wireless technology and alert users to potential Bluetooth security risks. The AirMagnet software identifies and tracks devices up to 300 feet away and lets users know what their own Bluetooth devices are doing. BlueSweep runs on laptop computers that support Windows......
[more] Your SSID Isn’t Hidden Forever A common security practice among wireless network administrators is to disable Service Set Identifier (SSID) broadcasting on wireless access points or routers. The reason is that disabling SSID broadcasting is supposed to hide and protect their wireless network. Even if an individual knows there is a wireless network at a certain location, this person must know the SSID to establish a connection with the network.
Therefore, hiding the SSID by disabling SSID broa......
[more] WiFi to cover London’s Square Mile London's Square Mile financial district will have near total WiFi coverage by the end of this year.The wireless network will be installed in street furniture such as lampposts and street signs. The City of London Corporation, which commissioned the network, says it will be the first of its kind in the world with full roaming capability.Traditional wireless links comprise standalone hotspots, but the City's new platform will be a mesh network that enables conti......
[more] Thank you Superhacker, you saved my computer Many people leave their Wi-Fi link unsecured, leaving them open to fraud. But a new breed of ‘ethical hackers’ is helping, says Joseph Dunn Peter Booth was minding his own business last Sunday afternoon at home in Kippax, near Leeds, when the knock on the door came. On his porch was Andrew Mason, 6ft 4in and dressed in a black T-shirt. He was holding a laptop and a strange antenna that resembled a Pringle crisps tin on a stick. "Your computer has......
[more] Researchers crack WEP WiFi security in record time The WiFi security protocol WEP should not be relied on to protect sensitive material, according to three German security researchers who have discovered a faster way to crack it. They plan to demonstrate their findings at a security conference in Hamburg this weekend. Mathematicians showed as long ago as 2001 that the RC4 key scheduling algorithm underlying the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) protocol was flawed, but attacks on it required the i......
[more] Wireless security cracked in a minute German researchers demonstrate new technique to break Wep-protected networks in 60 seconds. The security found in most wireless access points can now be cracked in under a minute, cryptographic researchers found.Erik Tews, Andrei Pychkine and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann at the cryptography and computer algebra group at the Technical University Darmstadt in Germany found that by refining and applying a form of attack against Wired Equivalent Privacy (Wep) developed......
[more] Two cautioned over wi-fi 'theft' Two people have been cautioned for using people's wi-fi broadband internet connections without permission. Neighbours in Redditch, Worcestershire, contacted police on Saturday after seeing a man inside a car using a laptop while parked outside a house. He was arrested and cautioned. A woman was arrested in similar circumstances in the town earlier this month. BBC Midlands Today correspondent Dr David Gregory said the cases are among the first of their kind. He a......
[more] Wi-Fi hack caused TK Maxx security breach Hackers who stole 45 million customer records from the parent company of TK Maxx did so by breaking into the retail company's wireless LAN , it emerged on Monday. TK Maxx's parent company, TJX, had secured its wireless network using Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) - one of the weakest forms of security for wireless LANs. Hackers broke in and stole the records - which included millions of credit card numbers - in the second half of 2005 and throughout 2006......
[more] FBI issues wireless security warning The FBI has issued a warning telling wireless network users to ‘make sure you've got the best possible security measures in place. And don't delay.' The FBI says that it has ‘recently learned that the basic protection against intruders - Wireless Encryption Protocol, or WEP - is increasingly vulnerable to accomplished hackers.' This information came from one of the members of the FBI's longstanding InfraGard program, which brings together public......
[more] Wireless security 2007 Unraveling the confusion about wireless standards is no mean feat. Justin Peltier takes a look at the latest crop of products in the field of wireless security management.Wireless networks are not about to go away any time soon. The convenience of losing the copper tether and gaining the ability to roam from one end of a campus to another without re-authenticating is just too practical. In the earlier days of wireless networks, the security controls were riddled with flaw......
[more] More Wireless, Not Enough Security Since 2002, RSA, the security division of EMC (Quote), has been doing regular surveys of wireless networks found in big cities - essentially, wardriving the same streets, time after time, using everything from cars to buses to horse-drawn carriages - to see what changes. For 2007, they found that while deployment of Wi-Fi was up, so was security - but security is not keeping up with the deployment. "We drive the same route in New York, London and Paris,&q......
[more] City ignoring Wi-Fi risks London firms are still using insecure wireless encryption Revelations earlier this year that poor wireless security contributed to the theft of 45 million credit card numbers at US retailer TJ Maxx increased calls for firms to abandon Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), the protocol found to be at fault. But a recent survey of London's wireless infrastructure by RSA suggests WEP use remains widespread, and this is despite a new payment card industry (PCI) standard requiring......
[more] Wireless Protocols Learning Guide Ensuring wireless security can still be a big hold-up to the actual deployment or the continued use of a wireless network in the enterprise. This section of the Wireless Protocols Learning Guide covers monitoring and security policies for a wireless network in addition to a discussion of available tools and configurations that enhance wireless security. WLAN technology deployments have increased, and federal regulations (such as HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley and Gramm-L......
[more] AirMagnet Enterprise 8.0 Revolutionises Wireless IDS Intelligence fAirMagnet Inc., the leader in security, performance and compliance solutions for wireless LANs, announced a major new release of its award-winning AirMagnet Enterprise, the industry's premier solution for continuous wireless LAN security and management. Enterprise 8.0 is packed with new capabilities that allow customers to provide better protection for their wireless environments and to do so more efficiently. The system detects......
[more] The top 10 reasons Web sites get hacked Experts say the people who actually build Web applications aren't paying much attention to security; a non-profit group is trying to solve that Web security is at the top of customers' minds after many well-publicized personal data breaches, but the people who actually build Web applications aren't paying much attention to security, experts say. "They're totally ignoring it," says IT consultant Joel Snyder. "When you go to your Web site des......
[more] Cafe Latte attack steals data from Wi-Fi users If you use a secure wireless network, hackers may be able to steal data from your computer in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee. At the Toorcon hacking conference in San Diego this coming weekend, security researcher Vivek Ramachandran, will demonstrate a technique he's developed to attack laptops that use the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption system to log on to secure wireless networks. Developed in the late 1990s, WEP was the def......
[more] WEP destroyed by new client hack It was cracked long ago, but still hacks for the discredited WEP wireless security protocol keep coming.The latest one to be uncovered is the work of AirTight Networks' researchers Vivek Ramachandran and MD Sohail Ahmad, and was demonstrated at last weekend's Toorcon9 conference. Aided by flaws in the Windows Wi-Fi stack, the new attack involves coaxing an isolated Windows laptop into sending back ARP packets in response to a barrage of the same from the attacki......
[more] Wi-Fi virus outbreak is possible, researchers say If criminals were to target unsecured wireless routers, they could create an attack that could piggyback across thousands of Wi-Fi networks in urban areas like Chicago or New York City, according to researchers at Indiana University. The researchers estimate that a Wi-Fi attack could take over 20,000 wireless routers in New York City within a two-week period, with most of the infections occurring within the first day. "The issue is that......
[more] UK's most popular Wi-Fi router defaults to insecurity From the folks at security think tank GNUCitizen comes yet another demonstration of the insecurity that's present by default in the UK's most popular home broadband router. By default, the BT Home Hub, which is manufactured by Thomson/Alcatel, uses a weak algorithm to generate keys used for locking down a Wi-Fi network. So weak, in fact, that Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) keys can be predicted in just 80 guesses on average. GNU has written a......
[more] Are You Ready for the All Wireless Workplace? With 802.11n offering performance and security on par with cabled Ethernet, why wouldn’t you embrace wireless? This, anyway, is the vision of WLAN equipment vendors. The most telling slogan is Motorola’s: “Wireless by default, wired by exception.” The truth, though, is this all-wireless vision takes some parsing. All-wireless is coming—if you’re talking about the end-user perspective. No one is proposing wireless data centers. Ethernet t......
[more] UK's lax wireless security threatens TJX-style hack UK shoppers' credit-card details could be at risk from the same wireless hack technique that snared more than 40 million people's details in the US, according to security experts. Security at hundreds of medium-sized retailers is not fully checked to ensure financial details cannot be accessed through insecure wireless networks, the experts claimed. The claim comes in the wake of US authorities charging 11 people in connection with the country......
[more] London consumers trounce corporates in wireless security London homeowners are more careful about defending their wireless networks against trespassers than their corporate counterparts. One in five business networks fail to use any form of wireless encryption while 90 per cent of Londoners use encryption of some kind at home. RSA's seventh annual wireless security survey also found the wireless penetration at home was far more advanced than in either New York City or Paris, with 55 per cent of......
[more] Once thought safe, WPA Wi-Fi encryption is cracked Security researchers say they've developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard used to protect data on many wireless networks. The attack, described as the first practical attack on WPA, will be discussed at the PacSec conference in Tokyo next week. There, researcher Erik Tews will show how he was able to crack WPA encryption and read data being sent from a router to a laptop computer. The attack could a......
[more] 10 Questions to Ask an IT-Security Consultant Finding the right IT-security consultant is a little like searching for a good family doctor. You need to hire someone who is intelligent, insightful, understanding and a good communicator. To get to the truth and discover if the person you're interviewing really knows his or her stuff, you'll need to ask some offbeat and tricky questions. Here are 10 questions to use in your search for an IT-security consultant: 1. What is the danger posed by the M......
[more] Plan to extend police-hacking powers gathers pace The UK government has agreed to work with the European Parliament on plans to extend police powers to conduct remote searches of computers. The European Union Council of Ministers approved a plan in November 2008 to grant law-enforcement authorities in member states the power to perform remote searches of suspects' computers, as well as to perform 'cyber patrols' of the internet and increase data sharing between European police forces. The plan,......
[more] Russians start selling Wi-Fi encryption cracker The Russian security company that caused a stir some months by talking up its cracking tool for recovering Wi-Fi encryption keys, has started selling its software to all-comers in a specially packaged product. Normally, running a tool to do this on a conventional Intel Core 2 Duo desktop PC would take months to brute force even a single 8-character WPA/WPA2-PSK password, of which there are trillions of possible alpha-numeric combinations at that b......
[more] New paint promises high-speed Wi-Fi shielding IT managers should start familiarising themselves with a new security tool, the paint brush, as Japanese researchers have come up with a paint that they say will block high-speed wireless signals, giving businesses a cheap option to protect their wireless networks. The problem of securing wireless networks has been an issue for a while now. Wi-Fi LANs with no encryption or running the obsolete WEP system, run the risk of having hackers outside the b......
[more] Retailers still failing on wireless security Retailers are dragging their feet when it comes to ensuring wireless networks are safe from hackers, a new survey has claimed. Thousands of wireless access points (APs) in busy retail centres across the globe are wide open to wireless data-robbers, an annual Motorola wireless security survey found. Almost a third (32 per cent) of 7,940 APs probed were found to be unencrypted, a six percentage point rise on the year before. A quarter of APs were still......
[more] Enterprises still neglecting WLAN security Most European enterprises are neglecting their wireless LAN security, with an alarming number using only the most basic security protection for their wireless networks. So discovered a Motorola survey carried out by Vanson Bourne, which found that over half (65 percent) of large European companies use the same security measures for both wired and wireless networks, when in reality, they need different handling. The survey questioned 400 IT directors at......
[more] Financial districts a wireless hacker's paradise The majority of wireless access points located in seven metropolitan financial centers have easy-to-break or nonexistent security, according to a survey conducted by security firm AirTight Networks and published on Wednesday. The survey, which summarized more than 30 scans in six U.S. cities and London, found that 57 percent of the access points had no security or used Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), an older and easy-to-hack form of encryption.......
[more] UK retail Wi-Fi security still patchy Wi-Fi security in UK retail environments is improving, but shops remain vulnerable to the sorts of attacks carried out as part of the infamous TJX credit card heist. The cybercrooks, who lifted more than 21 million credit card records, leapfrogged onto the retailer's credit card database after first breaking into the wireless network of a regional store, a subsequent investigation ahead of upcoming US trials revealed. The incident ought to have acted as a wa......
[more] Overlooked online threats There's the danger you know, and then there's the danger you don't know. Most of us are rightfully wary of downloading and running programs that have no pedigree, or of performing day-to-day operations as an administrative user. But with each passing year, new security threats march in to eclipse the old, many of them not getting their share of attention until it's too late. Threats go unappreciated for various reasons. Some seem too obscure or unlikely to be valid unt......
[more] Misconfigured Cisco wireless gear could lead to Wi-Fi breach Users of a popular Cisco Systems wireless access point may be setting themselves up for trouble if they leave a WPA wireless migration feature enabled, according to researchers at Core Security Technologies. The issue has to do with Cisco's Aironet 1200 Series Access Point, which is used to power centrally managed wireless LANs. The Aironet 1200 can be set to a WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) migration mode, in which it provides wireless......
[more] Data breaches: 4 fundamental ways to shore up your defenses If you're like most IT professionals, you constantly feel as if you should be paying more attention to security. But it's tough to find the time, budget and staff to do the best job possible. Or is it? In its most recent, and rather depressing, report on data breaches, Verizon concluded that IT security had not improved much since its first report was published in 2008."This study always reminds us that our profession has the neces......
[more] Man used neighbor's Wi-Fi to threaten Vice President Biden A Blaine, Minn., man has pleaded guilty to charges that he hacked into his neighbor's Wi-Fi connection to e-mail death threats and child pornography, apparently with the intention of causing trouble for the unsuspecting neighbor. Barry Vincent Ardolf, 45, pleaded guilty last week to charges of hacking, identity theft, possession of child pornography and making threats to Vice President Joe Biden. According to prosecutors, he used the Air......
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