What is WiFi? Types Of WiFi Security Protocols

What is WiFi? Types Of WiFi Security Protocols

Hello, everyone! In this article we're gonna talk about the different wireless security methods and protocols that are used in wireless networks.

✡ WIFI - Wireless Fidelity

WIFI also Spelled as Wi-Fi is a local area wireless technology. 
It allows an electronic device to transfer data or connect to the internet using ISM radio bands. 
It is an underlying technology of wireless local area network (WLAN). 
Wi-Fi allows computers and other devices to communicate over a wireless network.
Wi-Fi network components are based on the one of the 802.11 standards developed by the IEEE and adopted by Wi-Fi alliance. It provides a standard way to connect with wireless network. 
Wi-Fi is the trademark of the Wi-Fi alliance and used as a brand name for products using the IEEE 802.11 standards.
Wi-Fi can be used on several types of devices like personal computers, video game console, smart phones, digital camera, tablet computers etc. 
You can use Wi-Fi to create a hotspot within the range of 20 meters (66 feet). 
It is less secure than wired connection because the intruder does not need the physical connection to use the Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi is based on IEEE 802.11 specifications. 
This is a list of Wi-Fi standards in chronological order.
802.11a
802.11b
802.11g
802.11n
802.11ac
A wireless accessing point 802.11b or 802.11g provides range of 120 ft indoor and 300 feet outdoor access of internet through computers, laptops, smart phones etc.

Now most of us had connected to a Wi-Fi network with our laptop, tablet or even our smartphone, and to join that network with our device you had to select a network name and you had to supply a password in order to connect with Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi network can be just open with no password required, so that means that anybody can join it. There is no encryptions.

However in the majority of cases Wi-Fi networks will be secure and will require a password.
Now there are several different protocols that are used for securing a Wi-Fi network.

✡ WEP - Wired Equivalent Privacy 

It was developed in 1999.
it's the earliest security protocol that was used for wireless networks.
From its name we meant that to supply the same security to wireless networks as it did for wired networks.
It has 64bit encryption and after then 128bit encryption.
WEP, recognizable by its key of 10 or 26 hexadecimal digits.
But after a time it was found out that a encryption key that WEP used was vulnerable and not secure and therefore it was easily hackable.
That's why today WEP is no longer used and modern wi-fi routers won't even have it as an option anymore.
So a better security protocol was needed for wireless networks.

✡ WPA - Wi-Fi Protected Access 

It is another wireless security protocol that was developed to solve the problems of WEP.
It was developed in 2004 with 256Bit encryption.
WPA is far better than WEP and this is because it uses a stronger encryption methods called TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol).
TKIP dynamically changes its keys as it's being used and this ensures data integrity.
Specifically, the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) was adopted for WPA. WEP used a 64-bit or 128-bit encryption key that must be manually entered on wireless access points and devices and does not change. TKIP employs a per-packet key, meaning that it dynamically generates a new 128-bit key for each packet and thus prevents the types of attacks that compromised WEP.
But even though WPA is more secure than WEP even today WPA is outdated because TKIP did have some vulnerabilities.
Just for knowledge in some device wifi security like WPA-PSK means Wi-Fi Protected Access-Pre-Shared Key.

✡ WPA2 - Wi-Fi Protected Access 2

WPA2 was developed to provide even stronger security than WPA.
And it does this by requiring the use of a stronger encryption method.
While WPA uses TKIP for encryption which is known to have some limitations.
WPA2 uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard).
AES uses a symmetric encryption algorithm which makes it strong enough to resist a brute-force attack.
In fact AES is so secure that the U.S. federal government has adopted it And is now using it to encrypt sensitive government data.

When you log into the Wi-Fi router's configuration page an you go into the Wi-Fi security section.
Where you would find the different security protocols that you can choose from to protect your Wi-Fi network.
So here is an example from an older router, here you can see the WEP, WPA and WPA2 protocols that we discussed.
If Router is a few years old then it still has WEP as an option.
But in newer routers won’t even have WEP as an option because WEP is weak and outdated and is no longer used.
You also noticed that some of the routers, there’s an option that has both WPA and WPA2 and this is a mixed security option.
This option enables WPA and WPA2 at the same time so it’ll use both TKIP and AES security.
The reason for this option is for compatibility purposes because some older devices like prior to 2006 may not be compatible with using AES encryption that’s used with WPA2 and so these older devices will connect to the older WPA protocol but at the same time modern devices will connect to WPA2.
So if all of your devices are modern then the best option is to choose WPA2 which only uses AES.

✡ WPA3 - Wi-Fi Protected Access 3

Now the next generation of wireless security is WPA3.
WPA3 was introduced in 2018 and according to the official Wi-Fi website. 
WPA3 provides cutting edge security protocols to the market.
It adds new features to simplify Wi-Fi security and enable more robust authentication and it will receive increased protections from password guessing attempts.
WPA3 won’t be available on every Wi-Fi router that you purchase today because it was just introduced last year.

✡ WPS - Wi-Fi Protected Setup

We discussed a few password protected security protocols but there is another wireless security method that doesn’t require you to type in a password and this method is called WPS.
WPS stands for Wi-Fi Protected Setup and WPS was designed for people who know little about wireless networks to make it as easy as possible for their devices to join a wireless network.

In WPS configuration page of router, There are a couple of different methods that are used with WPS, Like push button method and WPS pin number method.

But the most common method is the push button method. 
So with this method you would just press a couple of buttons and then you'd be connected.
For example, most routers today will have a physical WPS button that you can press and a lot of Wi-Fi printers will also have a software or a physical WPS button. 
Now if you wanted to connect this wireless printer to your Wi-Fi network then simply you would press the WPS button on your Wi-Fi router and within 2 minutes you would press the WPS button on your printer and then your printer would connect to the Wi-Fi router in a few seconds And that’s really as simple as it gets.

The second method is by using WPS pin number.
if you have a WPS pin number then you would just enter that pin number into the field and within a few seconds it’ll connect.
So WPS is the easiest way to join a wireless network and a lot of manufactures have built their wireless products with WPS.
And this is to make it as simple as possible for their costumers to join their device to a wireless network.

✡ ACL - Access Control List

There’s one more method we need to talk about and this is called the Access Control or in some routers it’s called the MAC Filter and with this option you can either allow or block devices from joining your network.
Every network adapter has a MAC address (Media Access Control Address) and MAC address is a hexadecimal number that uniquely identifies each device on a network and with Access Control you can either allow or block access by using the device’s MAC address.
When a device is blocked it would only be able to get an IP address from your router but it won’t be able to communicate with any other device and it would not be able to connect to the Internet.
The Access Control is an extra layer of security that’s in addition to secure your Wi-Fi password and the Access Control is also for wired devices.