Course 3 Week 2 Wireless protocols and WPA

802.11

A suite of protocols used in wireless communications.

CCMP

Counter Mode Cipher Block Chain Message Authentication Code Protocol- A protocol that provides encapsulation and ensures message authentication and integrity.

IEEE802.11

IEEE802.11, commonly known as WIFI, is a set of standards that define communications for wireless LANs.

IEEE

Insititute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (an organization that maintains wifi standards)

KRACK attack

Key Reinstallation Attack- Malicious actors use this attack to decrypt transmissions using WPA.

Backwards compatibility

The ability of a system to use or run older software or hardware.

WPA2

The second version of WIFI Protected Access. Released in 2004, and uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) as well as the Counter Mode Cipher Block Chain Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP) to improve upon WPA.

WPA3

The third version of WPA developed in 2018. The key differences are- WPA3 addresses the authentication handshake vulnerability to KRACK attacks; WPA3 uses SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals0 which is a password-authenticated, cipher-key-sharing agreement; and WPA3 has increased encryption to make passwords more secure by using 128-bit encryption.

WPA

WIFI Protected Access- developed in 2003 to improve upon WEP, addresses the security issues that it presented, and replace it. It also was always intended to be a transitional measure so backwards compatibility could be established with older hardware.

WEP

Wired Equivalent Privacy. A wireless security protocol developed in 1999 and designed to provide users with the same level of privacy on wireless network connections as they have on wired network connections. Widely out of use today.