How safe is WAP

How safe is WAP? New to the wireless stuff. If I had a choice do I use
WEP or something else? Right now my network sharing is my entire pc
drives A, C, D, E, H on 2 of my pc's.

On 12 Aug 2005 18:17:05 -0700, "WFF" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>How safe is WAP?

About as safe as one can be. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has
ever been hurt using WAP.

>New to the wireless stuff. If I had a choice do I use
>WEP or something else? Right now my network sharing is my entire pc
>drives A, C, D, E, H on 2 of my pc's.

WEP64 and WEP128 can easily be cracked. So far, only very weak pass
phrases in WPA have been cracked.


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# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
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On 12 Aug 2005 18:17:05 -0700, "WFF" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>How safe is WAP?

Wireless Access Points use very low power so they are safe.

Barry
=====
Home page
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og

WFF wrote:
> How safe is WAP? New to the wireless stuff. If I had a choice do I use
> WEP or something else? Right now my network sharing is my entire pc
> drives A, C, D, E, H on 2 of my pc's.
>
I'd go with WPA instead of WEP -- much safer.

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:46:32 -0400, Shadowman <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>WFF wrote:
>> How safe is WAP? New to the wireless stuff. If I had a choice do I use
>> WEP or something else? Right now my network sharing is my entire pc
>> drives A, C, D, E, H on 2 of my pc's.
>>
>I'd go with WPA instead of WEP -- much safer.
>
I'll second the motion on this, and add that WPA was much easier
to set up and get operating smoothly than was my WEP attempt. I
had a notebook with an older 802.11b wireless adapter that
wouldn't handle WPA so I tried setting my home network up, using
WEP. It would work fine until one of the computers went into
sleep mode. This computer would drop the link and the only ways
to bring it back alive was to either re-boot or key in the
passphrase and click on the connect button.

I trashed the 802.11b notebook adapter and replaced it with an
802.11g, then re-structured my home network for WPA encryption.
This has been working flawlessly for more than a week. It even
survived a thunder storm that had the lights blinking and the
computers falling back to their UPS power.

"WFF" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com:

> How safe is WAP? New to the wireless stuff. If I had a choice do I
> use WEP or something else?

WPA-PSK with TKIP is very safe. I am not aware of any reports that it
has been cracked, and it contains several safeguards against attack.

It is important to use a strong passphrase - the usual recommenstaion
is 20 characters or more, consisting of non-dictionary words.

WPA encryption based on a PSK (Pre Shared Key) has been cracked, but
only with weak (ether very short or short dictionary words), but not
TKIP which changes the encryption key frequently.

If your hardware and firmware / device drivers support it, WPA2 is
even stronger - it uses AES encryption for which no attacks are
known.

Hope this helps

--

Richard Perkin
To email me, change the AT in the address below
richard.perkinATmyrealbox.com

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is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's.
It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
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Taking a moment's reflection, WFF mused:
|
| Right now my network sharing is my entire pc
| drives A, C, D, E, H on 2 of my pc's.

Other than adding to the others recommending WPA over WEP, I will
add that sharing your entire drive(s) is *very* insecure. Should
someone get on your LAN, they would have complete access to your
system(s). You should only share those folders that you need to share.
For example, I have one folder "C:\Shared" on each of my computers and
notebooks that are shared on the network. That way, no matter which one
I am using, I can drop or pull files from the others' folder. Also,
UltraVNC allows me to remotely control any of the computers from the
others.