WEP vs. WPA: Three Key Protections Gained

WEP vs. WPA: A Comparison of Security Features

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Question

When you compare WEP to WPA (not WPA2), which three protections are gained? (Choose three.)

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D. E.

ACE.

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) are two encryption protocols that are used to secure wireless networks. WEP is an older protocol that is less secure than WPA. In this question, we are asked to compare WEP to WPA (not WPA2) and identify the three protections gained by using WPA over WEP.

The correct answers are A, C, and E:

A. A message integrity check: WPA provides a message integrity check to protect against data tampering. This means that if an attacker tries to modify the data being transmitted, the receiver will be able to detect the change and reject the message. WEP, on the other hand, does not provide any such protection, making it vulnerable to attacks that modify the data in transit.

C. Avoidance of weak Initialization vectors: WPA avoids the use of weak Initialization vectors (IVs), which are used to initialize the encryption process. WEP uses a weak IV system that makes it vulnerable to attacks that can break the encryption keys. By avoiding weak IVs, WPA provides a higher level of security compared to WEP.

E. A rekeying mechanism: WPA has a rekeying mechanism that changes the encryption keys at regular intervals. This helps to protect against attacks that can compromise the encryption keys over time. WEP, on the other hand, uses the same encryption keys indefinitely, making it vulnerable to attacks that can eventually break the encryption.

B and D are incorrect answers:

B. AES-based encryption: AES-based encryption is a feature of WPA2, not WPA. WPA uses TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) for encryption, which is less secure than AES.

D. Longer RC4 keys: WEP uses RC4 encryption with a 40-bit key, which is considered weak and vulnerable to attacks. WPA uses TKIP encryption with a 128-bit key, which is stronger than WEP, but still less secure than WPA2, which uses AES encryption with a 256-bit key.