WEP help

[Joshua Wright]

Doug,

WEP wasn't designed to be used in the fashion you are describing - the WEP keys must be known to both parties before being able to communicate.

I'm not sure how you would establish a mechanism where the client tells the AP what WEP key they want to use.  Even if you did get past that stumbling block, you would need to communicate the key in the clear before using it - which would give an attacker the key to decode the traffic with. :(

-Joshua Wright
Team Leader, Networks and Systems
Johnson & Wales University
Joshua.Wright at jwu.edu 
http://home.jwu.edu/jwright/

pgpkey: http://home.jwu.edu/jwright/pgpkey.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Yeager [mailto:doug at aircomwireless.net]
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 11:20 AM
To: hostap at shmoo.com
Subject: WEP help


I'm looking for some kind of help guild to explain to me the basic concepts of WEP.
 
Right now I have a few wireless nodes serving various coffee shops.  I have not experimented with WEP.
 
What I think it does is this:  allow any client to select to use WEP and pick their own key.
Then they can talk w/ the AP using that encryption key that they picked.
 
But those who just want to talk w/ the AP w/o WEP can do so also.  
 
I may be wrong on how WEP is used but that is what I thought it should do.
 
I've experimented w/ setting my AP in open mode w/ some random key using iwconfig util.  
 
Iwconfig wlan0 s:aircom open
 
This doesn't seem to do what I want.  Actually it cuts off communication to my clients.
 
 
If someone could clear up how wep is used, it may help a bit along with what commands to enable it how it want to use it would be helpful.
Or if a document tells me somewhere, that reference would be great.
 
Thx much,
doug