What is the difference between WEP and WPA?


Let us begin by understanding what WEP is.

WEP

WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy. It is the generally used Wi-Fi security protocol in the world. WEP was produced as a Wi-Fi security requirement in 1999, September.

The first form of WEP was not especially strong, even for the time they were launched, because U.S. regulation on the export of several cryptographic technologies led to manufacturers confining their devices to only 64-bit encryption. When the condition was lifted, it was raised to 128-bit. In spite of the introduction of 256-bit WEP, 128-bit remains one of the most common implementations.

WEP was destined to support a protection level that is similar to a wired network. Users can set their connection points to either open or to use shared keys. Setting it to open allows anyone linked to the network while the shared key uses a passphrase to validate that the user is certified.

The characteristics of Wired Equivalent Privacy is its 10 or 26 hexadecimal digits key, or it can also say 40 or 104 bits. If it can take a view in history, these 40 or 104 bits were very famous between the users and treated one of the best choices for configuration the routers. However, the Wired Equivalent Privacy (or WEP) was originally designed to support a level of security for wireless networks, or it can more expressly say WLANs.

WPA

WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access. It is a Wi-Fi security standard that is predetermined to restore the earlier WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy. WEP was presumed to hold Wi-Fi networks secure but passed out to be very accessible to exploit and divide into, therefore it's been condemned in favor of WPA.

WPA creates using Wi-Fi networks more secure than leaving them unencrypted. With unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, it is achievable for someone using a program known as a packet sniffer to view the information coming across the network.

WPA also executes something known as the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) for authorizing clients. Instead of authorizing computers based completely on their MAC address. It can use different methods to verify each computer's identity. This makes it more complex for unauthorized systems to gain access to the wireless network.

WPA needs TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) to regulate dynamic keys and hugely advance data encryption, containing the initialization vector. Usually, WPA is TKIP with 8021X. WPA operates equally to WEP, but using dynamic keys, facilitates the RC4 algorithm to generate a bitstream that can encrypt it with XOR, and the initialization vector is 48 bits.

Dynamic key change can make it inaccessible to use the same system as WEP to open a WPA-secured wireless network. WPA can provide multiple control access systems, containing user passwords, digital certificates, or authentication of another system, or use a shared password to recognize you.

Updated on: 22-Nov-2021

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