Wireless security: Harder than you think

Once more I sat at the control console and went through the D-Link wireless access point’s forms to enable WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption. I knew it wasn't exactly the best encryption on the planet, but it was better than nothing at all, and the network I was working with didn't handle much sensitive information anyway.

I entered the key in hex and clicked the submit button. Next, I went to a laptop computer that already had 802.11g built in. Until I'd enabled encryption on the access point, everything had been (in technical terms) hunky-dory. Now, of course, the access point couldn't be reached.

So I went through the configuration for the 802.11g hardware (designed for the laptop by Hewlett-Packard), entered the same hex key as I'd entered into the access point, and confirmed that the rest of the settings were correct.

Again I submitted the changes. And again the laptop wouldn't communicate with the access point.

I tried a different laptop, one with an Enterasys 802.11b card. It had also worked fine with that access point until encryption had been turned on, but now nothing worked. So I enabled encryption on the Enterasys card, and again nothing worked.

Just for grins, I shut down both computers and restarted. I'd noticed in a number of tests I've conducted over the years that sometimes a wireless card needs to be powered off before settings will actually work, even though this isn't supposed to be necessary. Unfortunately, that didn't help either. Once again, I turned off encryption on each of the laptops and on the access point, and returned to operating in the clear.