Re: WEP Keys in AP mode


From: Jouni Malinen (jkmaline_at_cc.hut.fi)
Date: 2002-01-18 21:58:07 UTC



On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 06:12:24PM -0500, Amit Green wrote:

> The documentation says it can't support WEP keys in
> AP mode. Has anyone got it to support one WEP key?

At least I haven't seen it working correctly in Host AP mode using WEP keys on any of the Prism2 card/STA f/w I have access to. As far as I know, STA f/w does not support WEP (at all) in Host AP mode. In other words, this would need to be implemented in the host driver.

> (i.e.: we understand we can't support different WEP
> keys for each session, due to hardware/firmware
> limitations. But can we support one WEP key for
> all the sessions we establish?)

Not without implementing it in the driver.. I really do not like the idea of using WEP due to its more or less total insecurity. End-to-end security with, e.g., IPSec or secure shell tunnels would be a lot better idea for securing the data.

There have been some progress in IEEE 802.11 TgI to design an improved version of WEP. I might consider implementing a generic interface for loading encryption code as a separate kernel module to enable easy testing platform for different algorithms. If someone would really like to use WEP, it would then be possible to implement it as a separate module using the same interface.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA


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