WEP not good?? ..... how safe are we?

hi, we have 4 computers and 3 mobile phones in the house.
we have previously been using WPA-PSK, all working fine.

But now, my bro has a new nokia phone, and he cant pick up wi-fi with router set to WPA.....when we change the security to WEP.....his phone picks up wifi connection.

Ive heard WEP is no good as its easy to hack into?
What are the consequences? say if someone gets into our connection,...... do they just use the internet?? or can they see everything we are doing?? can they see the websites we visit....the passwords we write? the emails we write etc etc??? ..... or do they just use the internet connection? harmlessly..........

ive generated a 128bit password for our WEP........ and im using internet on my macbook now with it. ...............

should we not setttle for anything but WPA?

i tried to set up this: WPA-802.1x
but it was asking for other info.......stuff i have no idea how to set up........
WPA-802.1x is the best and safest option right?

thanks for any info/help......

Windows XP Pro

Posted on Nov 3, 2008 2:28 PM

18 replies

Worm76

Level 2

265 points

Nov 4, 2008 11:56 AM in response to bob2131

This is my experience with WEP: its a fu *ng joke compared to WPA

A WEP key can be cracked in 10min from a ordinary laptop. (NO its not a joke!)
My friend demonstrated this fact on my old network. Using WEP-128bit and hidden SSID, 11min 34sec later he was inside my network. He was not abel to gain access to my Mac (its pretty locked down in every way), but my PC fell after another 15-20min. Im sure that one can get the same level of hardiness on a PC as well but i dont know how to do that.

I was pretty quik to change the encryption to WPA2 Personal and change my router to an Airport Extreme, the engineers at Apple have done their homework and bolted all back doors on that thing (please prove me wrong on this), friend gave up after 4 hours trying to get in.

There are applications out there that can do this for you and you dont even have to be a computer geek to use them-worst of all these programs are free.

The industry has their eyes open to this fact now days and a lot of the big producers of network equipment wont let you use WEP anymore

"Its a sad fact, but given enough time ALL security measures will fall, we can only make it so that its not worth the effort."

orangekay

Level 5

4,085 points

Nov 4, 2008 4:34 PM in response to Bob Gold

Completely untrue. KisMac can grab the SSID without any problems regardless of whether or not it's broadcast.

Tim Haigh

Level 7

24,198 points

Nov 5, 2008 3:35 AM in response to orangekay

"allow broadcast of name(SSID)"......deselected......right bob gould

see orangekays post.

Also MAC address filtering does not protect you either.

My solution is to use WPA2. If an when i need to connect a older WEP client. I plug in an old wrt54g to my LAN with WEP then when I have finished i unplug it. This means there is only a small window of opportunity for the cracker to get in.

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WEP not good?? ..... how safe are we?