Introducing Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)

Introducing Wired Equivalent
Privacy (WEP)
The primary line of defense in a Wi-Fi network is Wired Equivalent Privacy
(WEP). WEP is an encryption system, which means that it scrambles — using
the encryption key (or WEP key, in this case) — all the data packets (or individual
chunks of data) that are sent over the airwaves in your wireless network.
Unless someone on the far end has the same key to decrypt the data,
he (theoretically) won’t be able to make heads nor tails of it. It’ll be gibberish.
So even though your data is beamed right through the side of the house
into that snooper’s PC, it will arrive in an unreadable form.
WEP also has a second security function: Not only does it encrypt your data
being transmitted over the airlink, it also can be used to authenticate users
connecting to the access point. In other words, not only do you need a WEP
key to decode data transmitted over the airlink, but you also need a WEP key
to get your computer connected to the access point in the first place. If an
access point has WEP enabled and you don’t have the key, you can try and
try, but you’ll never get connected to it.
Although the WEP key itself is a long series of numbers and letters, you often
don’t have to make up this key yourself. (It’s harder than you think to just
spew out some random numbers and letters.) Instead, you just have to enter
a pass phrase (some regular English words that you can remember), and the
software will use this pass phrase to generate the key for you.