What are WPA and WEP?

WPA stands for Wifi Protected Access.

WPA is an IEEE standard responsible for implementing wireless network security.

WPA is a wireless security certification program developed by WiFi alliance to increase security of wireless networks and computers.

Some of the main features of WPA are TKIP and MIC. TKIP stands for Temporal Key integrity Protocol.

Its an encryption mechanism that uses hashing tables to generate 128 bit per packet encryption key. Its integrity check feature makes sure that the key is not tampered.

MIC stands for Message integrity check. MIC prevents attackers and hackers from capturing or modifying the packets.

It also helps stop session hijacking and man in the middle attacks. MIC also uses an integrity check to verify the packets, the unsafe or potentially harmful packets are discarded.

WEP stands for wired equivalent privacy. WEP is an algorithm that implements security features on IEEE 802.11 wireless networks.

WEP was introduced in 1999 to provide confidentiality and security to wireless networks. WEP security is available in all routers, access points and wireless networks devices. WEP uses RC4 Stream cipher for implementing confidentiality and checksum CRC 32 for integrity of data packets.

WEP uses two methods of authentication.
• Shared key authentication
• Open system authentication.

WEP is relatively less secure than WAP due to static authentication keys and short initialization vectors and had been replaced by WAP or WAP2 as a standard security protocol for IEEE.

WEP encryption is also more vulnerable and can be easily cracked by attackers due to short length and obsolete security checks.