WiFi Protected Access
WPA is a security protocol designed to create secure wireless (Wi-Fi) networks. It is similar to the WEP protocol, but offers improvements in the way it handles security keys and the way users are authorized.
WPA referred to as the draft IEEE 802.11i standard became available in 2003. The Wi-Fi Alliance made it as an intermediate measure in anticipation of the availability of the more secure and complex WPA2, which became available in 2004 which is a common shorthand for the full IEEE 802.11i (or IEEE 802.11i-2004) standard.
For an encrypted data transfer to work, both systems on the beginning and end of a data transfer must use the same encryption/decryption key. While WEP provides each authorized system with the same key, WPA uses the temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP), which dynamically changes the key that the systems use. This prevents intruders from creating their own encryption key to match the one used by the secure network.
WPA implements something called the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) for authorizing users. Instead of authorizing computers based soley on their MAC address, WPA can use several other methods to verify each computer's identity. This makes it more difficult for unauthorized systems to gain access to the wireless network.
WPA, like its predecessor WEP, has been shown via both proof-of-concept and applied public demonstrations to be vulnerable to intrusion. Interestingly, the process by which WPA is usually breached is not a direct attack on the WPA protocol (although such attacks have been successfully demonstrated), but by attacks on a supplementary system that was rolled out with WPA—Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)—which was designed to make it easy to link devices to modern access points.
WPA
The WPA is an intermediate measure to take the place of WEP. WPA could be implemented through firmware upgrades on wireless network interface cards that were designed for WEP in 1999. However, since more changes were required in the wireless access points (APs) than those needed on the network cards, most pre-2003 APs could not be upgraded to support WPA.
The WPA protocol implements almost all of the IEEE 802.11i standard. The Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) was adopted for WPA. WEP used a 64-bit or 128-bit encryption key that must be manually entered on wireless access points and devices which once entered can never be changed. TKIP employs a per-packet key, which means that it dynamically generates a new 128-bit key for each packet and thus prevents the types of attacks that compromised WEP.
WPA included a Message Integrity Check, which is designed to prevent an attacker to alter or resend data packets. This replaced the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) that was used by the WEP standard. CRC’s had a main flaw that it did not provide a sufficiently strong data integrity guarantee for the packets it handled. Well tested message authentication codes existed to solve these problems, but they required too much computation to be used on old network cards.
WPA uses a message integrity check algorithm called TKIP to verify the integrity of the packets. TKIP is much stronger than a CRC, but the algorithm used in WPA2 is stronger. Researchers discovered a flaw in WPA similar to older weaknesses in WEP and the limitations of the message integrity code hash function, named Michael, that is used to retrieve the keystream from short packets to use for re injection and spoofing.
WPA2
WPA2 replaced WPA. WPA2, which requires testing and certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance, implemented the mandatory elements of IEEE 802.11i. Particularly, it included mandatory support for CCMP(Counter Mode CBC-MAC Protocol), an AES(Advanced Encryption Standard) based encryption mode.
WPA is a security protocol designed to create secure wireless (Wi-Fi) networks. It is similar to the WEP protocol, but offers improvements in the way it handles security keys and the way users are authorized.
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| Wifi Protected Access |
WPA referred to as the draft IEEE 802.11i standard became available in 2003. The Wi-Fi Alliance made it as an intermediate measure in anticipation of the availability of the more secure and complex WPA2, which became available in 2004 which is a common shorthand for the full IEEE 802.11i (or IEEE 802.11i-2004) standard.
For an encrypted data transfer to work, both systems on the beginning and end of a data transfer must use the same encryption/decryption key. While WEP provides each authorized system with the same key, WPA uses the temporal key integrity protocol (TKIP), which dynamically changes the key that the systems use. This prevents intruders from creating their own encryption key to match the one used by the secure network.
WPA implements something called the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) for authorizing users. Instead of authorizing computers based soley on their MAC address, WPA can use several other methods to verify each computer's identity. This makes it more difficult for unauthorized systems to gain access to the wireless network.
WPA, like its predecessor WEP, has been shown via both proof-of-concept and applied public demonstrations to be vulnerable to intrusion. Interestingly, the process by which WPA is usually breached is not a direct attack on the WPA protocol (although such attacks have been successfully demonstrated), but by attacks on a supplementary system that was rolled out with WPA—Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)—which was designed to make it easy to link devices to modern access points.
WPA
The WPA is an intermediate measure to take the place of WEP. WPA could be implemented through firmware upgrades on wireless network interface cards that were designed for WEP in 1999. However, since more changes were required in the wireless access points (APs) than those needed on the network cards, most pre-2003 APs could not be upgraded to support WPA.
The WPA protocol implements almost all of the IEEE 802.11i standard. The Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) was adopted for WPA. WEP used a 64-bit or 128-bit encryption key that must be manually entered on wireless access points and devices which once entered can never be changed. TKIP employs a per-packet key, which means that it dynamically generates a new 128-bit key for each packet and thus prevents the types of attacks that compromised WEP.
WPA included a Message Integrity Check, which is designed to prevent an attacker to alter or resend data packets. This replaced the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) that was used by the WEP standard. CRC’s had a main flaw that it did not provide a sufficiently strong data integrity guarantee for the packets it handled. Well tested message authentication codes existed to solve these problems, but they required too much computation to be used on old network cards.
WPA uses a message integrity check algorithm called TKIP to verify the integrity of the packets. TKIP is much stronger than a CRC, but the algorithm used in WPA2 is stronger. Researchers discovered a flaw in WPA similar to older weaknesses in WEP and the limitations of the message integrity code hash function, named Michael, that is used to retrieve the keystream from short packets to use for re injection and spoofing.
WPA2
WPA2 replaced WPA. WPA2, which requires testing and certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance, implemented the mandatory elements of IEEE 802.11i. Particularly, it included mandatory support for CCMP(Counter Mode CBC-MAC Protocol), an AES(Advanced Encryption Standard) based encryption mode.
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