WEP Wireless Security Stinks – Find Out Why

A part of securing your network needs of your wireless access points. Wireless access can be dangerous to your network. Most people do not know how easy it is to use wireless access points. Let me illustrate my point. I went one afternoon and took my trusty laptop with me. The task was to scan this afternoon "open" wireless access points. An "open" wireless access point is one that has no encryption, or security, on the signal.This allows anyone to listen to your stream.

If you still can not get, it's a very bad thing! So I drove for about 2 miles through a small business district and apartment complex. What was the outcome? Oh, about 45 open wireless networks. This means that I could subscribe to those networks, scan it, and to use machines connected to that network. I did not do it, but you my drift. The lesson here is to encrypt your wireless data stream.

Some people think that the choiceWEP encryption provides great wireless security. It would be wrong. Your wireless router may have an option for WPA and WEP. You should always choose WPA security over WEP. Let me explain why. I set up a wireless network in my home. I enabled WEP security with 128-bit encryption. The "strong" security for WEP encryption. I wrote the security key and then I started my test. My aim was to hack my own WEP wireless network. I thought it woulda really difficult task. I was wrong.

I shot on my Linux laptop. Linux is simply an alternative operating system to Windows. This particular Linux distribution or Linux variant was a safety issue. This gave me all kinds of tools to scan for wireless networks and exploiting. A typical hacker is all these free tools are available. I then fired up Kismet. Kismet is a great Wi-scanning program. I have my wireless network in the list. Ifound the connected client and the access point or router. Then I went to a typical type of attacks do on the network. Hackers have to dig what a "package" from a computer that already has the key for the secure wireless network. The hacker can then this package to replies from the router. Why is this so important? This allows the hacker a tremendous amount of data from the access point to collect. And they can eventually crack the hacker on the WEP securityKey.

So I went to my own hacking WEP wireless router. I "deauthenticated" my computer that was already connected to the router. This gave me the package I needed for the router. Then I started sending this packet to the router a lot. Once I had enough data from the router, I then went to a cracking program. Viola, it cracked the key in about 1 second. After the dust settled, I had cracked my WEP security in less than 30 minutes! But would the typical userI chop? Probably not. The only thing they would see is that their wireless connection for a moment lost. This is when I deauthenticated "grab" them from the network of "packet" I needed it.

Remember, I had my set WEP encryption to 128 bits. This is a high level of encryption. But it does not matter. All the hacker needs is a signal to crack a little time to them. Remember that hackers like house thieves. You will walk on the path of least resistance. TheYour wireless signal is harder to crack, the less likely that you will be hacked. They will simply move to the next "open" network, or with poor encryption. Do yourself a favor, and always choose WPA wireless security to WEP.

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