WPA Full Form
What is the full form of WPA?
WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access. This is a widely used security in modern routers for protected wireless internet connections. It helps to keep unknown users from connecting to your Wi-Fi network. Whatever data you receive and transmit through the internet is dispersed in the air. Hence it becomes essential to encrypt this data because attackers can intercept it, and privacy can be compromised. To overcome this issue, Wired Equivalent Privacy(WEP) was introduced in 1997; its upgrade was WPA in 2003.
Why do we need WPA?
The internet is connected through fiber cables, that is, wired connection across the whole world. It is not practical for us to be always connected through a wire to access the internet. Also, if we need to add more devices, more cable connections will be required. One solution to this problem is using a router. The router is connected to the whole world through a fiber cable, and the device accessing the internet is connected to the router wirelessly. The medium transmission of data through the device and the router is air. Data packets are being released in the air in a limited range from where the device and router exchange data. One drawback of this method is that an attacker can intercept this packet easily if in the range. Therefore encrypting this data becomes necessary. Using WPA, now encrypted data packets are being released. These packets, when captured by the router or the device, get decrypted using a private key that is on the router and the device using Wi-Fi.
How does WPA work?
The data packets are sent with a 256-bit encryption key. But among other differences between Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and WPA, the main difference is that WPA uses a temporary key while WEP has a fixed key. Having a temporary key that changes with every data packet makes WPA more secure than WEP. Even if the key for a data packet is cracked, which is not easy as it is 256-bit encryption, it can not be used to decrypt other data packets. Hence each data packet is sent with a different key which is solved only at the predetermined device. Despite these improvements, WPA can be cracked at this time with advancement in high processing CPUs-which led to WPA2 in 2004, followed by WPA3 in 2018.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
WPA uses temporal key integrity protocol(TKIP), which keeps changing the key for each data packet. TKIP encryption was later replaced by Advanced Encryption Standard(AES).
Message integrity check is a very smart algorithm that can detect if an attacker has captured or modified the data packets.
WPA key is a password that is required to connect to a wireless network. With the increased number of characters and the use of different characters, cracking becomes much more complex and time-consuming. Therefore an alpha-numeric password with a unique character is advised while setting up your WPA key.
WPA targeted users are:
WPA Personal
WPA Enterprisers
WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup)
It lacks forward security as WPA uses a less reliable encryption algorithm and necessitates a shorter password. It doesn't have an enterprise solution because it wasn't designed to be secure enough for commercial use.