Surveying Wi-fi Security

This paper is a study of the use and possible flaws of the two basic cryptographic protocols (WEP, WPA) in Wi-Fi Networks. It is presenting some very easy to implement methods to gain malicious access to such networks by disclosing the network secret key, using Windows Operating Systems, like Win XP. It is also describing the shutter of the myth saying that the MAC Address filtering is a safe practice for securing a wireless network. There is a field research where we present the distribution of wireless networks according to the security protocol implemented (if any) at a major city centre in Greece. Unfortunately, our results show that only 8% of the wireless networks are using a fairly safe cryptographic scheme, 48% is not using any security at all, while the rest is using the totally unsecure WEP encryption.