WEP

=WEP= Author: Rebekah Edgar

WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy. It is used to encrypt information over wireless networks to prevent "eavesdropping" over the use of radio waves. When you use a wireless network that uses only the default security with the WEP turned off, the information that you send over the wireless can be read by intruders and they can log into your network. If you want to share information to other computers with the information encrypted and hidden from intruders, you need a WEP key. The WEP key is a series of hexadecimal digits between 0 and 9 and A-F used for allowing information to be shared between devices. For two devices to be able to share the encrypted information, they must both have the same WEP keys.

WEP was introduced to the world of wireless internet in 1997. In 2003, the WEP had a new replacement made because of the many weakness found in the security such as the fact that the encryption key could easily be found out by an intruding third party by "listening to traffic for a few hours on a busy network . This new security encryption improvement for WEP is called @WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) . Later on in 2004, WPA2 was released as a better form of WPA that provided stronger security against snooping . Despite its weakness, WEP is still the first choice presented to people by router configuration tools for security over the public wireless internet.

Hacking a WEP Wireless Network
With the technology as it is today, it has become very easy to hack into a WEP enabled network. The softwares needed can be found publicly on the internet to download. There are even video tutorials posted on YouTube and other blogging and hacking websites like tomsguide.com. There are books like "Hacking Wireless Networks for Dummies" that teach steps to hacking as well. To be actually able to hack into somebody else's computer, you will need hardware and software like: two laptops with wireless capability (one works fine but it is easier and safer with two and there is less chance that you could get confused), the software called Aircrack-ng 1.0, 2 802.11b PC Cards based on the PRISM 2 chipset, an antenna and other programs that can be found on a Backtrack CD. When doing the actual "attacks" on other wireless internet users, it is possible to accidentally knock a client off an AP. The hacking process for a WEP encrypted network is sometimes "sniffing" (monitoring data packets sent over wireless) and searching for vulnerable points through programs such as Pong and or just breaking the encryption itself by network encryption-cracking software like  Aircrack -ng.

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