In the world of wireless security, WEP has been the main facility for a long time so most people are most familiar with it. However, there are some more secure methods. In another article I wrote called “A Look at the Linksys WRT150N Wireless-N Router security features,” I wrote about WEP and its shortfalls. In this article, I will introduce PSK for the Linksys WRT150N consumer router. There are two consumer PSK technologies: PSK Personal (WPA), and PSK2 Personal (WPA2). Pre-shared key mode (PSK, also known as personal mode) is designed for home and small office networks that cannot afford the cost and complexity of an 802.1x authentication server.

WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) implements a protocol called Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), which dynamically changes keys as the system is used. This strengthens the security mechanism because it is hard to hit a target moving with a random pattern.
WPA includes a special countermeasure mechanism that detects an attempt to break TKIP and temporarily blocks communications with the attacker.

WPA2 implements the mandatory elements of IEEE 802.11i standard. In particular, in addition to TKIP and the Michael algorithm, it introduces a new AES-based algorithm, CCMP, that is considered fully secure. AES and CCMP will not be discussed in this article. The practical thing to remember about WPA2 is that WPA2 implements the full standard, but will not work with some older network cards. Official support for WPA2 in Microsoft Windows XP was rolled out on 1 May 2005. Driver upgrades for network cards may be required.

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