Wifi Encryption Method

[gothic_type]

Hi, I'm not sure if someone else has already asked this (20 days back was as far as I was prepared to look), but does anyone know of any sites with detailed information on an encryption method for use with a wifi network which changes the encrypted key every couple of minutes or something like that, in order to make it more difficult for someone to crack your encrypted key?

I haven't got a wifi network set up myself (although I did set one up for my uncle, and I realise now that it is not very secure), but I was considering investing in a wireless router. I know that the chances of someone breaking into my network through the wireless connection are very small in my area (a street that leads to a deadend; not on the main road), but I still wouldn't like to set one up if there was a possibility that someone that I did not know could break into my network.

Any software would have to be multi-platform because I run a couple of pc's on different operating systems, but I guess I was really just asking for some links to info rather than software to help me :P

Thanks, ac

[DjM]

Have a quick look around the net for TKIP . I have done a little reading on this, but not much. It determines which encryption keys will be used and then verifies the client's security configuration. Second, it is responsible for changing the unicast encryption key for each frame or every 10,000 packets.

TKIP is a quick-fix method to quickly overcome the inherent weaknesses
in WEP security, especially the reuse of encryption keys. According
to "802.11 Planet," "The TKIP [security] process begins with a 128-bit
'temporal key,' [which is] shared among clients and access points.
TKIP combines the temporal key with the [client machine's] MAC address
and then adds a relatively large 16-octet initialization vector to
produce the key that will encrypt the data. This procedure ensures
that each station uses different key streams to encrypt the data. TKIP
uses RC4 to perform the encryption, which is the same as WEP. A major
difference from WEP, however, is that TKIP changes temporal keys every
10,000 packets. This provides a dynamic distribution method that
significantly enhances the security of the network."

This might be something you can use.

Cheers:

[gothic_type]

Thanks for the reply :P

[Maestr0]

802.1X

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...=Google+Search

-Maestr0

[tabich]

Here is a fairly good overview of wifi security. I believe it is about a year old(when I first came accross it, so there may be more recent information from google(WPA is a new one which I do not think is listed).

http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/w/...ecurity-1.html

Good luck

[D0pp139an93r]

One other thing to think of besides encryption may be MAC filtering, or even just lowering the broadcast power. I believe that can be done on some routers/AP's.

This is just another thing to do to make the network secure.


I believe Intel is working on a new wireless encryption scheme....