The vulnerabilities in WEP.
Research some of the different studies conducted on the vulnerabilities in WEP. What were those studies and explain why WEP is vulnerable. What is a stronger security protocol and why?
Sample Answer
Here are some of the studies conducted on the vulnerabilities in WEP:
- The Fluhrer, Martin, and Shamir (FMS) attack: This attack was published in 2001 and showed that WEP could be cracked in a matter of minutes using a laptop computer and a few hundred packets of captured data. The FMS attack exploited weaknesses in the way that WEP generates encryption keys.
- The Koresh attack: This attack was published in 2005 and showed that WEP could be cracked even faster than the FMS attack. The Koresh attack used a technique called “replay attacks” to exploit weaknesses in the way that WEP handles retransmissions.
- The PTW attack: This attack was published in 2007 and showed that WEP could be cracked even without capturing any data. The PTW attack used a technique called “statistical analysis” to recover the encryption keys.