Possible to secure WEP?

You could change the key every 5 minutes? :)

Ari hath wroth:

Actually, it is possible to secure a wireless network against both intrusion and sniffing without any encryption of any type. It's called a VPN (virtual private network). The random user connects to the network and is give a totally useless IP address by the DHCP server. The default gateway goes only to the VPN server. Without the complex authorization and authentication keys needed to connect to the VPN, the random user gets nowhere. However, if they successfully authenticate with the VPN, a new additional IP address gets issued, with a gateway that points to the corporate LAN or to the internet. At this point, it looks just like a normal wireless connection, except that everything is encapsulated and encrypted inside the VPN packets.

The catch is that your home network will need some type of local server that can terminate the VPN. As such, it's not really a suitable solution for home networks but might give you some ideas. If I were to propose such a system, I would need a router that can terminate the VPN, such as a Sonicwall, Netgeear or Netscreen VPN router. The wireless could be provided by a simple wireless access point (or wireless router with the router section disabled) or by a VPN router that has built in wireless. I'm too lazy to itemize models. That will work, but with the added hardware and complexity, you may as well just buy a router that does WPA and forget the VPN.

I was thinking more along the lines proxy software on both ends of the wireless, where the user could define the method of encryption or set up a table to change the key every so often automatically, most machines with internet access can easily maintain time within a few seconds, so the keys could be changed on a predefined schedule. This would be software running in the PC, so perhaps this is a weakness.

You could do that, want to buy a client that does that? email me ;)

David.

Oh and of course you have changed the parameters, your original question was whether it was possible to secure WEP and now it's not in the picture. :)

Incidentally, the client software that I have in mind would require two licences to be legal and the cost would exceed that of a home router that did WPA.

David.

Setup VPN :-)

JM

Bzzzt, cheating, that's not using WEP and requires an endpoint ;)

You guys are just reinventing WPA - TKIP

Nope, what I have will do AES256 client to client, can do wired/wireless or both, already exists, nothing to be (re)invented :)

AP can be left completely open.

David.

snip

Use a VPN. Its complex to set up, but secure. Mark McIntyre

I'd like to. Any idea how to configure my wireless (or wired) clients connect via PPTP to the PPTP daemon in a Talisman-firmware WRT54G?

I can't get it to respond with the GRE packets...

I cheat at everything I do. It's no fun being conventional.

Wireless routers with VPN endpoint built in:

Another option that might be worth considering for such is something like

-- Mark

He didn't want to buy another router, if he did then he might as well just lump for an ebay jobbie which supports WPA. :)

I guess, he should be getting the impression that the answer is NO to the original question by now ;)

David.

Doesn't run on his router, he doesn't want to buy another router.

Project Specification chaps!! :D

Will these terminate a VPN that originates with WiFi clients, or just terminate VPNs that originate on the Internet? I've always thought it was the latter...

Sure, I just didn't want people getting the idea from the previous article that one had to pay anything near $130 for VPN-on-router.

-- Mark

It really shouldn't matter - an IP network is an IP network - but I confess to being stumped trying to make it work on my WRT54G.

What firmware? IIRC, the Linksys firmware doesn't terminate VPNs...