Wi-Fi Security Standard Nears Approval
Industry sources said the IEEE 802.11i specification could be ratified this Thursday, adding a needed layer of security to the Wi-Fi standard.
Sources said the draft specification is on the agenda to be ratified this week as part of an IEEE-SA standards committee meeting in Piscataway, N.J. One source said that although a vote on the proposed specification is not guaranteed, a decision to end the three-year standards process is likely.
The 802.11i standard would add a needed layer of security to Wi-Fi, which has become widespread both in the consumer and corporate spaces. Early attempts at security, such as WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), provided some basic security but were derided as too easy to crack.
A superior form of encryption, dubbed WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access), has basically replaced WEP, although it still doesn't meet the stringent standards needed for the transmission of sensitive government data.
802.11i's encryption protocols are based on RC4, a stream-based algorithm developed for RSA Security Inc. —the same algorithm used for WPA.
