With more and more users carrying around net-tops, wifi-capable smart phones, and most every computing device these days shipping with a wireless interface card integrated, it seems only natural to implement a wireless network.

You purchase a router of your choice, configure the basic options, then it comes time to configure your wireless security options.
Most routers/access points come pre-configured with WEP as the default option – and most users think that the 64-bit hexadecimal key must be more secure than setting your own WPA(2) passphrase that can be as short as 5 characters. Think again.

In one study, WEP was shown to be cracked in less than a minute due to various flaws in the authentication protocol.

The next option would be to use WPA which was brought to replace WEP and fix all the security issues that came with it. But this time, there were issues with the de-authentication protocol – the passphrase was sent plain text when clients disconnected from the access point!

Next time you configure a wireless access point, be sure it is configured to use WPA2 – which is as of today not crackable using conventional methods.