The Evolution of Wireless Security

Wireless protocols rely on encryption methods to secure communications.

1. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

• Status: Completely broken and obsolete.
• Vulnerability: Uses a weak RC4 stream cipher and static Initialization Vectors (IVs), allowing the key to be cracked in minutes by collecting enough packets.

2. WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access)

• Status: Outdated.
• Improvement: Introduced TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol), changing keys dynamically, addressing WEP's flaws.

3. WPA2

• Status: Current standard (though being replaced).
• Encryption: Uses the robust AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) cipher.
• Vulnerability: Still vulnerable to offline dictionary attacks via the 4-Way Handshake Capture (covered in Lesson 128).

4. WPA3

• Status: The newest, strongest standard.
• Improvement: Introduces SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals), which defends against the WPA2 handshake capture attack.