Term of the Day: WEP

[Keefe]

WEP

Short for Wired Equivalent Privacy, a security protocol for wireless local area networks (WLANs) defined in the 802.11b standard. WEP is designed to provide the same level of security as that of a wired LAN. LANs are inherently more secure than WLANs because LANs are somewhat protected by the physicalities of their structure, having some or all part of the network inside a building that can be protected from unauthorized access. WLANs, which are over radio waves, do not have the same physical structure and therefore are more vulnerable to tampering. WEP aims to provide security by encrypting data over radio waves so that it is protected as it is transmitted from one end point to another. However, it has been found that WEP is not as secure as once believed. WEP is used at the two lowest layers of the OSI model - the data link and physical layers; it therefore does not offer end-to-end security.

Hey admin here's another term that related War Driving in refrence to war dialing this is where a couple hackers take a car, a laptop, and a wireless network adapter and drive by diffrent corporations looking for open networks in the companies that employ wireless networks.  I read an article on geek.com or the register (forget which) about this.  Evidently in it's infancy this wireless networking thing was very insecure.  Maybe these new protocols will straiten some of this out.