Though this was later lifted to 128-bit, even this form of encryption offered a very limited possible key size. Government restrictions on the export of cryptographic technology caused access point manufacturers to limit their devices to 64-bit encryption. Governments reacted by attempting to keep their best secret-sauce recipes at home.Īround the time of WEP, U.S. its underlying encryption mechanism, andĭuring World War II, the impact of code breaking (or cryptanalysis) was huge.

“Deprecated” means, “Let’s not do that anymore.”Įven when it was first introduced, it was known not to be as strong as it could have been, for two reasons: Wired Equivalent Privacy is a deprecated security algorithm from 1997 that was intended to provide equivalent security to a wired connection. Let’s explore what makes these four acronyms so different, and how you can best protect your home and organization Wi-Fi. After all, WEP, WPA, WPA2, and WPA3 all have mostly the same letters in them.Ī password is a password, so what’s the difference? About 60 seconds to billions of years, as it turns out.Īll Wi-Fi encryption is not created equal. Setting up new Wi-Fi? Picking the type of password you need can seem like an arbitrary choice.

How long to crack wep