What is the difference between WEP and WPA?
Wired Equivalent Privacy, commonly called WEP is 802.11’s first hardware form of security where both the WAP and the user are configured with an encryption key of either 64 bits or 128 bits in HEX. So when the user attempts to authenticate, the AP issues a random challenge. The user then returns the challenge, encrypted with the key. The AP decrypts this challenge and if it matches the original the client is authenticated. The problem with WEP is that the key is static, which means with a little time and the right tool a hacker could use reverse-engineering to derive the encryption key. It is important to note that this process does affect the transmission speed. The University of California at Berkley and the University of Maryland performed studies on WEP and found that they could typically decrypt a WEP key in at least 8 hours to several days. A more recent study by AT&T Labs outlines a modification of this technique that enables retrieval of the network key in fifteen minutes or le
