What is a WEP Key Passphrase?
To understand what a WEP key passphrase is, we first need to understand what WEP is. WEP is the Wired Equivalent Privacy portion of IEEE 802.wireless networks. WEP was introduced to provide security to wireless networks in view of their vulnerability to eavesdropping because of their use of radio waves. WEP uses the stream cipher RC4 for confidentiality. A WEP key is therefore a security code that is generated using this protocol. WEP keys allow computers on a network to exchange encoded messages with one another while hiding the contents of the messages from intruders. This key is what is used to connect to your wireless-security-enabled network.
