From Sandro Gauci, a computer security consultant based in Malta, comes this comment on Monday’s “On Computers” column, in which wireless router security was discussed:
The protection offered by WEP has long been proven to be too weak for even household networks. In fact tools exist (lookup aircrack-ng) that attack the security mechanism and can break it in a few seconds. No need for expensive hardware to do this either. Luckily most routers bought in the past few years have two other options - WPA and WPA2 which are not susceptible to the same vulnerabilities.
Therefore I think that “turn on ‘WEP’ security on your wireless router” would read better as “turn on ‘WPA2’ security on your wireless router.”
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Mr. Gauci may well have a point: I haven’t tried WPA2 as yet, and I’ve found WEP good enough for my home setup. But there’s nothing to suggest that better alternatives may be useful, so I plan to give WPA2 a try, if and when I can.
