If you're running a wireless LAN on the 802.11 standards, you may think your organization is secure. Think again. Joe User can drive to the local computer store, buy a wireless access point for less than $100, and be free from . . .
If you're running a wireless LAN on the 802.11 standards, you may think your organization is secure. Think again. Joe User can drive to the local computer store, buy a wireless access point for less than $100, and be free from Ethernet cables and any legitimate security within 15 minutes. And hunting down one of these rogue access points is not an easy task.

During the inception of the 802.11 standards for wireless networking, the IEEE had to resolve a fundamental issue of wireless security; it's vulnerable because it uses radio signals through open air space, as opposed to electrical signals through closed wires. The Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) standard was created to address this liability. It was supposed to make wireless networks as private as wired networks by using 40-bit and 128-bit encryption. Maybe it's due to a lack of peer review or some other misstep, but whatever the reason, that "equivalent privacy" is not so private after all.

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