WPS - WiFi-Protected Setup

This form of security is used for initial setup of a secure wireless network between a device and the router. To use WPS, the device must have a physical WPS button accessible. By pressing this button and the WPS button on the router, a secure connection between the device and network is established.

Another method for using WPS is through a PIN, located on the router. When configuring WPS on a computer, a screen will appear on the device asking for the WPS PIN. After entering this PIN, the router will check to see if it is valid and will accept the connection accordingly.

WPS setup.jpg

This image shows an example of WPS PIN setup.

WEP - Wired Equivalent Privacy

WEP was created to give an "equivalent" form of wireless security that the standard wired network connection provides. It was released in 1997 for public use. WEP used a minimum key size of 40-bits (or 64-bits), with 128-bit and 256-bit key support added later.

For packet encryption, WEP uses an Initialization Vector (IV) of 24-bits. As the number of sent packets increases, the IV has a high chance of repeating. This duplicate IV can be exploited by attackers by comparing the two IVs and then cracking the encryption through the similarities.

This image shows the security configuration for a Linksys router.

WPA - Wi-Fi Protected Access

Introduced in 2003, WPA was created as an intermittent form of wireless security between WEP and the later WPA2. Unlike WEP, WPA only uses 256-bit keys; this dramatically increases the security of WPA over WEP.

WPA also uses TKIP - Temporary Key Integrity Protocol. This protocol creates a new encryption key for all packets and checks the integrity of each packet, sending a notification if any packet had been intercepted or changed by an attacker. Since WPA was made to fill the gap between WEP and WPA2, it had to be compatible with devices already using WEP. Unfortunately, these compatability changes created some vulnerabilities in WPA, similar to WEP vulnerabilities.

WPA2 - Wi-Fi Protected Access 2

WPA2 was released in 2004 and officially became the security standard over WPA in 2006. It replaced TKIP with AES encryption. This form of encryption requires 18 million-trillion operations to crack the encryption on one packet. WPA2 allows pre-shared keys on clients and the wireless access point (AP) for very secure authentication, since the keys are never transmitted freely over wireless.