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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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creating a type of “accepted users” list to limit access to your wireless

network, but it works best when you have a small number of users. A table

stored in the WAP lists the MAC addresses that are permitted to participate in

the wireless network. Any data packets that don’t contain the MAC address

of a node listed in the table are rejected.

NOTE MAC filtering might sound airtight, but it isn’t. An attacker can use

special software to listen for the MAC addresses of nearby clients and spoof

the address of an accepted client.

Wireless Security Protocols and Authentication

Methods

Wireless security protocols provide authentication and encryption to lock

down wireless networks. Wireless networks offer awesome connectivity

options, but equally provide tempting targets. Wireless developers have

worked very hard to provide techs the tools for protecting wireless clients and

communication. Wireless authentication accomplishes the same thing wired

authentication does, enabling the system to check a user’s credentials and

give or deny him or her access to the network. Encryption scrambles the

signals on radio waves and makes communication among users secure.

This section looks at several generations of wireless security protocols,

covering WEP, WPA, WPA2, and WPA3. We’ll look at typical

authentication methods, and finish with a simple consumer-oriented solution.

(See “Infrastructure Mode” later in this chapter for the scoop on enterprise

authentication installations.)

WEP Early on, Wi-Fi developers introduced the Wired Equivalent Privacy

(WEP) protocol to attempt to ensure that data is secured while in transit over

the airwaves. WEP encryption uses a standard 40-bit encryption to scramble

data packets. Many vendors also support 104-bit encryption. Note that some

vendors advertise 128-bit encryption, but they use a 104-bit encryption key.

Unfortunately, WEP encryption includes a flaw that makes it extremely

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