Which protocol was historically the first to provide privacy but is now insecure?

Which protocol was historically the first to provide privacy but is now insecure?

• A. WEP
• B. WPA
• C. WPA2
• D. WPA3

Answer: (A)

WEP was the first approach aimed at giving wireless traffic privacy, but it is now known to be insecure due to design flaws in how it encrypts and protects data. It uses RC4 for encryption with a short initialization vector (IV) of 24 bits. That small IV space means IVs repeat quickly on busy networks, so the same keystream is reused. When attackers collect enough packets, they can detect these repetitions and recover the keystream, which lets them uncover the plaintext or derive the key. On top of that, the integrity check in WEP relies on CRC-32, which isn’t cryptographically secure and doesn’t prevent tampering. All of these weaknesses together let attackers perform practical offline and online attacks to decrypt traffic or inject false frames. Later standards—WPA, then WPA2, and now WPA3—address these flaws with stronger encryption and better authentication, but WEP’s original attempt to provide privacy is what makes it historically first yet presently insecure.

WEP was the first approach aimed at giving wireless traffic privacy, but it is now known to be insecure due to design flaws in how it encrypts and protects data. It uses RC4 for encryption with a short initialization vector (IV) of 24 bits. That small IV space means IVs repeat quickly on busy networks, so the same keystream is reused. When attackers collect enough packets, they can detect these repetitions and recover the keystream, which lets them uncover the plaintext or derive the key. On top of that, the integrity check in WEP relies on CRC-32, which isn’t cryptographically secure and doesn’t prevent tampering. All of these weaknesses together let attackers perform practical offline and online attacks to decrypt traffic or inject false frames. Later standards—WPA, then WPA2, and now WPA3—address these flaws with stronger encryption and better authentication, but WEP’s original attempt to provide privacy is what makes it historically first yet presently insecure.