UX-50 Wireless WEP

[Tyme]

How do you set the WEP so it can log into your own network?
I can't seem to set the WEP. :confused:

[gahenton]

go into preferences, Network,
services set to your Wireless LAN
select details
select your SSID
use the dropdown menu to select edit
the second line is for WEP Key

Gerry

[shender]

I understand that using WEP does take up a bit of processor overhead on the encription side. Another option is to set your router to accept certain MAC addresses only (of which your UX50 will be one). No overhead, and reasonably secure.

[arth1]

No, that is not reasonably secure at all.

MAC filtering is saying "only allow packets that say they are from XXXX or YYYY". Note the "say they are" part. It's unverified authentication, which has nothing to do with encryption.
On a MAC-filtered WLAN, everything passes in plain text, including the MAC addresses. One of the first things a wardriver learns is to collect the MAC addresses that are being used, and setting his network card to match one that's been used recently, but not within the last few minutes.

Even if you only want to block really stupid people or those who don't have a NIC where the MAC can be set, you still send everything in clear text. People can listen in, and capture all traffic to/from all your wireless devices, including emails, web page login information, and much much more. That might be acceptable to you, but don't assume that it is for others.

As for overhead, WEP has very little overhead, as it's basically an XOR mechanism. It's hardly noticable on anything except the most brain dead implementations. Even the UX50 with its dead slow hardware isn't noticably affected by it. The access point checking the MAC against a list for every packet is probably taking up more power than WEP.
Do yourself a favour, and implement WEP and MAC filtering, and make sure you rotate the keys every so often.

Best would be to use WPA, but unfortunately, Sony designed the UX devices before WPA had become finalized or commonplace. (And yes, WPA needs extra processing power, which is most often accomplished by placing a seperate processing unit on the devices that only does the WPA part.)

[gweilo8888]

No, that is not reasonably secure at all.

MAC filtering is saying "only allow packets that say they are from XXXX or YYYY". Note the "say they are" part. It's unverified authentication, which has nothing to do with encryption.
On a MAC-filtered WLAN, everything passes in plain text, including the MAC addresses. One of the first things a wardriver learns is to collect the MAC addresses that are being used, and setting his network card to match one that's been used recently, but not within the last few minutes.

Even if you only want to block really stupid people or those who don't have a NIC where the MAC can be set, you still send everything in clear text. People can listen in, and capture all traffic to/from all your wireless devices, including emails, web page login information, and much much more. That might be acceptable to you, but don't assume that it is for others.

As for overhead, WEP has very little overhead, as it's basically an XOR mechanism. It's hardly noticable on anything except the most brain dead implementations. Even the UX50 with its dead slow hardware isn't noticably affected by it. The access point checking the MAC against a list for every packet is probably taking up more power than WEP.
Do yourself a favour, and implement WEP and MAC filtering, and make sure you rotate the keys every so often.

Best would be to use WPA, but unfortunately, Sony designed the UX devices before WPA had become finalized or commonplace. (And yes, WPA needs extra processing power, which is most often accomplished by placing a seperate processing unit on the devices that only does the WPA part.)

WEP is not exactly trivial - numerous hardware routers take anywhere from a 30 to 50% performance hit with 128-bit WEP enabled. You might not notice a slowdown in the UX50 as it'll just bump the processor up to account for the extra work, but I'd put money on it having noticeably less battery life when WEP is enabled.

WEP is also fairly trivial to circumvent, the same as the MAC address thing. Any feeling of security you're getting from WEP is a false sense of security.

[shender]

Yikes, now I am concerned. MAC or WEP, both appear to have exposures. If someone is sophisticated enought to hack into my network, I guess they would be able to get in regardless. Hmmm....

Any suggestions on a wireless lan, used by my thinkpad and my UX50 ?

[arth1]

WEP is not exactly trivial - numerous hardware routers take anywhere from a 30 to 50% performance hit with 128-bit WEP enabled. You might not notice a slowdown in the UX50 as it'll just bump the processor up to account for the extra work, but I'd put money on it having noticeably less battery life when WEP is enabled.

WEP is also fairly trivial to circumvent, the same as the MAC address thing. Any feeling of security you're getting from WEP is a false sense of security.

No, WEP is not as trivial to circumvent as the MAC address. The MAC address is sent in plain text in every single packet. No cracking is needed at all.
To crack a WEP key, you have to listen for quite a while, until you have a large enough set of similar packets with the same 24-bit initialization vectors (which are ideally random for each packet, but at least pseudo-random). Once that's been captured, you can, due to the XOR method being used, determine the values that are shared in those packets, which among other packet data gives you the RC4 keystream. After that, it's relatively simple (with the right tools) to crack the password. It still takes at least hours, and more likely days of listening and data capturing to get enough data. By using 128-bit WEP (instead of 40-bit or 64-bit) and changing keys regularly, you're relatively safe.
That's completely different from MAC filtering, which as said before happens in plain text, and is immediately visible in all packets, and also does nothing to prevent anyone from listening to all your plain-text traffic (or joining in simply by setting their MAC to one that's allowed).

As for CPU use, you almost certainly confuse WEP with WPA or 802.11i. WEP is a simple XOR algorithm, and you'd have to be the most clueless coder in the world to incur a 30-50% performance hit due to WEP. Please show me one example of this.

WPA and 802.11i, on the other hand, most often use dual-key encryption that requires some massive maths, and is thus often handled by coprocessors -- when not, it often slows down the connection a fair bit.

--
*Art

[gweilo8888]

No, WEP is not as trivial to circumvent as the MAC address. The MAC address is sent in plain text in every single packet. No cracking is needed at all.
To crack a WEP key, you have to listen for quite a while, until you have a large enough set of similar packets with the same 24-bit initialization vectors (which are ideally random for each packet, but at least pseudo-random). Once that's been captured, you can, due to the XOR method being used, determine the values that are shared in those packets, which among other packet data gives you the RC4 keystream. After that, it's relatively simple (with the right tools) to crack the password. It still takes at least hours, and more likely days of listening and data capturing to get enough data. By using 128-bit WEP (instead of 40-bit or 64-bit) and changing keys regularly, you're relatively safe.
That's completely different from MAC filtering, which as said before happens in plain text, and is immediately visible in all packets, and also does nothing to prevent anyone from listening to all your plain-text traffic (or joining in simply by setting their MAC to one that's allowed).

As for CPU use, you almost certainly confuse WEP with WPA or 802.11i. WEP is a simple XOR algorithm, and you'd have to be the most clueless coder in the world to incur a 30-50% performance hit due to WEP. Please show me one example of this.

WPA and 802.11i, on the other hand, most often use dual-key encryption that requires some massive maths, and is thus often handled by coprocessors -- when not, it often slows down the connection a fair bit.

--
*Art


a) I didn't say it was *as* trivial, I said it was *fairly* trivial.

b) I am not talking about WPA or 802.11i - I am talking about WEP. I'll agree that *some* implementations have little or no performance hit - but many implementations (particularly on older products) have HUGE performance hits, even in name-brand products.

I could give you dozens of examples, but here's just a few:

* D-Link DI-713P (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=388)
"45% throughput decrease with WEP enabled"

* ZyXEL Prestige 316 (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=342)
"50% throughput decrease with WEP enabled"

* Asante FriendlyNet FR3200AL-1PCM (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=397)
"50% WEP-enabled throughput decrease"

* Multi-Tech RoutFinder RF802EW
(http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=405)
"60% WEP-enabled throughput decrease"

* Netgear MR314 (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=390)
"50% throughput decrease with WEP enabled"

* Linksys FEFW11P1 (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=363)
"50-60% throughput decrease with WEP enabled"

* Linksys BEFW11S4
(http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=301)
"Enabling WEP cuts throughput in half"

* SMC 7004AWBR (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/review.asp?pid=377)
"45% throughput decrease with WEP enabled"

Is that enough references for you? (and in some cases the throughput decrease was as much as 60%!) That list includes several well-known name brands such as D-Link, Linksys, SMC and ZyXEL (a well-known brand in Europe and Asia, less so here).