ZyXEL Communications P-870HN-5xb Support Notes page 74

installations use a single key that is shared between all mobile stations and access
points APs.
The WEP employs the key encryption algorithm, Ron's Code 4 Pseudo Random
Number Generator (RC4 PRNG). The same key is used to encrypt and decrypt the
data.
The WEP has defenses against this attack. To avoid encrypting two cipher texts
with the same key stream, an Initialization Vector (IV) is used to augment the shared
WEP key (secret key) and produce a different RC4 key for each packet. The IV is also
included in the package. The WEP keys (secret key) are available in two types, 64-bits
and 128-bits. Many times you will see them referenced as 40-bits and 104-bits
instead. The reason for this misnomer is that the WEP key (40/104 bits) is
concatenated with the initialization vector (24 bits) resulting in a 64/128 bit total key
size.
All contents copyright (c) 2009 ZyXEL Communications Corporation.
P-870HN-5xb Support Notes