What is actually... WEP and WPA?

For years, man has used encryption and codes to communicate his secrets only to chosen people. Even in times of war, it was always helpful to send important information to one's comrades in hidden messages, but the enemy eventually found out about the encryption. WEP and WPA are types of modern Internet encryption, although their WiFi security algorithm is no longer as unknown as one would like.

What is WEP?

Wired Equivalent Privacy" or WEP was verified as a WiFi security standard in September 1999, but was already dropped in 2004 by the committee of the WiFi Alliance, an association of companies, because of strong security gaps. It is the oldest WLAN security standard protocol. In its encryption, it uses an RC4 algorithm and keys of 64- or 128-bit length. Due to the security deficiencies, it is now possible even for a layman with the appropriate software to infiltrate the network within a few minutes. For this reason, a new encryption technique, WPA, has been used for some time.

What is WPA?

The "WiFi Protected Access" protocol, WPA for short, is the further development of WEP. It and its descendants are now among the most common WiFi security standard protocols and, as the name in the German translation suggests, offer protected WLAN access. In the meantime, there are not only WPA and WPA2, but also WPA3 is already being planned and is due to appear in spring 2019.
In the beginning, WPA was only intended as a temporary security correction to the WEP key. In 2003, it was officially confirmed as a WiFi security standard. Since WPA was based on WEP, it retained parts of the original programming and supplemented them with dynamic keys based on the "Temporal Key Integrity Protocol", or TKIP for short, a code that changes every minute. But even this protocol was cracked at some point. As early as 2004, there were several methods for translating the transmitted data as an intruder. However, it was not until 2009 that Japanese researchers developed a programme that, under certain conditions, made it possible to hack the system in less than a minute.
WPA was followed by WPA2 in 2004. It is an encryption protocol based on the 802.11i WiFi security standard. The encryption changes to the "Advenced Encryption Standard", or AES for short, which means "improved encryption standard" in German. As additional support, WPA2 continues to use TKIP with CCMP. CCMP stands for "Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol" and is an additional encryption based on the AES. Until a few years ago, this encryption was considered unbreakable and even now not all parts have been solved, but it has already been possible to obtain data. In October 2017, researchers at the University of Leuven succeeded in doing so using a KRACK attack.

Why are WEP and WPA still used?

It is a high risk to continue using encryption that can be cracked so easily, but not always avoidable. Some systems cannot be easily updated or renewed and just because one side of the transceiver line is ready to run on WPA2 does not mean that the other side is. For this reason, WPA and WPA2 connections are often combined. Since WAP can also be translated into WEP, communication is still guaranteed. Nevertheless, we recommend that you always keep your office equipment up to date, not only in terms of hardware but also software.