Field Guide to Wireless LANs for Administrators and Power Users, A

Wired-Equivalent Privacy (WEP)

During the standardization of IEEE 802.11-1997, there was a strong desire to include a set of minimal (but adequate) security services that could challenge the potential eavesdropper in the same way that a physical wire challenges an eaves dropper (or, in that case, wiretapper). WEP was carried forward, unchanged, in the next version of the standard, IEEE 802.11-1999.

WEP was designed to be a simple, yet secure-enough technology that could be implemented in software or firmware for little or no cost. Unfortunately, the design of WEP turned out to include a number of fatal flaws. In the course of describing how WEP works, we will have the opportunity to describe what is broken.

Unfortunately, security is a notoriously ...